We got up, finished packing, had breakfast, and called for a
taxi to the train station. We got tickets for the 10 AM train
to Glasgow's Queen Street (#6.50 each) which arrived about
10:30 AM. (Actually it was a little bit late due to some delay
or other.) On the train we met a couple of other fans from DC
and talked about Boskone and Disclave. There were some who
thought that swapping the weekends used for these would be a
good idea, and while that has much to recommend it, it probably
won't happen. It's a pity, because besides the Boston weather
situation being better in May, the swap would return Boskone to
a three-day weekend (it's President's Day weekend now, which
everyone in DC gets, but not most of the Boskone attendees).
The one major obstacle is that the Boston-area hotels are
usually pretty busy around May with college graduations.

We took a taxi from the station to the hotel and checked in.
The rooms are small compared to American hotel rooms, and
compared to the flat, but it does have a shower.

Intersection, the 53rd World Science Fiction Convention, was
held from 24 August through 28 August 1995 in Glasgow,
Scotland. There were approximately 4800 people attending,
making this larger than Confiction but smaller than Conspiracy.
(It was also smaller than ConAdian, but it felt larger.)

We decided to walk from our hotel to the SECC (Scottish
Exhibition and Convention Centre), since it appeared to be only
a fifteen-minute walk (or someone may actually have claimed
that). As Mark noted, however, "It's a fifteen-minute
walk ... for Pheidippides." (Or for the classically challenged,
Roger Bannister.) And it wasn't even an interesting walk, but
rather along the Clyde through a basically deserted area.

This is the probably the place to note that Intersection is the
most inconvenient convention we have attended in this regard.
Our hotel in The Hague was further away from the convention
centre, but the tram ran from in front of our hotel to within
two or three blocks of the centre. Most North American
conventions have the hotels within ten minutes walk, and the
main hotels are frequently attached. Even Brighton was more
compact, and the area around the Convention Centre was full of
shops, restaurants, etc., which made the walking more pleasant
and safer (or at least gave one that feeling--it may be
perfectly safe in Glasgow, but it doesn't feel that way).

(Later we found out that there was a train station at the SECC
connected to the city centre, but it was flooded earlier this
year an is still being repaired. With the train, things would
presumably have been more convenient. Still later, we found
out that a city bus ran from a block from our hotel to the
SECC, but the convention never told anyone about it. There was
a special shuttle bus to the major hotels, #7 for a pass or #1
per ride, but it ran only once per hour. The city bus was
30p.)

Registration was very fast--there were no lines, pretty
amazing for noon Thursday. We picked up the freebies, which
included an anthology of Scottish SF and some sample chapters
from Voyager books. Luckily there were no heavy books.

I looked through the Pocket Programme, which is in a small
loose-leaf binder for no really good reason, and discovered
that while I was credited for the Glasgow Bookshop List, I was
not listed in the Programme Participant Index. Well, I suppose
they wanted to limit to three pages and needed to include all
the pros first. The Pocket Programme requires a larger than
normal pocket, and still fails to provide a convenient daily
grid, as only the (somewhat non-descriptive) titles of the
panels are on the grid--the descriptions are elsewhere in it
(for most of the items). As is distressingly common, the film
schedule is not included in the grid (though it is in the
book), and the video schedule is not in it at all.

My suggestions for a Pocket Programme are:

It should fit in a standard man's shirt pocket.

It should have daily grids which include all programming
tracks. These should have a useful title, participants,
room, and time. Evening grids should be part of the daily
grids.

It should have an index by participant.

It should have an art show map, a dealers room map, site maps,
street map, and pertinent local information (e.g., ATMs,
chemist's, etc.). It is more important to locate the
restaurants on the map than the bookshops.

While I'm at it, I should also mention that there were no
schedules posted outside each room, giving the day's schedule
for that room. These help early-arrivers determine if they're
at the right place, and also remind people of things they might
want to attend that might get lost in the longer full lists.

One request for future conventions with a large international
attendance: if you use abbreviation for the various countries,
publish a list of what they stand for. Telling people, "Oh,
they're the same as what you see on license plates" may be
meaningful to European fans, but meaningless to people from
other continents.

The SECC is very nice, with a glass-roofed concourse and lots
of food stands. The Dealers Room is a bit smaller than North
American Worldcon Dealers Rooms, but with a higher
concentration of books. (Some people even claimed there were
too many books.) Of course, at shipping rates, I can't
afford to buy a whole lot....

There are, however, two problems. One, there are no clocks.
Two, there are too few non-smoking areas, particularly on the
concourse itself.

I got to this briefly once, but then every other time I had free, the
art show was closed. Part of the problem was that the art was nor
arranged in aisles which made resuming a tour of it easy, but rather it
was laid out in unmapped islands. Friends I spoke with had major
objections to the bidding process, which was remarkably undefined (how
many bids did it take to send something to auction?) and having
most of the pieces labeled "POA" ("Price On Asking") didn't help.
There should be a sheet with the rules given to bidders, and the rules
should be followed. (Apparently, some pieces without bids ended up in
the auction.)

Intersection had fewer panels that I was interested in that any
other Worldcon of recent memory, and only one or two more than
Boskone. The Green Room was actually three separate Green
Rooms, with coffee not available in the Moat House one, only
drinks. (In my opinion, more panelists need coffee than
alcohol before a panel.) One could supposedly get a chit for a
drink later, but whenever I tried they said they were running
low on chits and to just go over and get my drink--I didn't
need a chit. I don't think they quite understood.

The mechanics of the panels were not thought out. The rooms
had no clocks, and no one came in with signs for ten- and
five-minute warnings. It wasn't until Sunday that Programming
asked the panelists (via tiny notes on the tables) to wrap up
about ten minutes early. The signs for the panel titles and
panelists' names were hand-lettered instead of printed, making
them at times hard to read. (Apparently the convention
organizers dismissed a lot of suggestions from North American
convention organizers, saying, "We don't want to put on a North
American convention." It was only after a day or so that they
decided that some of these suggestions were good ideas for any
large convention.)

And finally, a problem that the convention planners may not
have any control over. Some dip had a cellular phone that kept
ringing during panels, to the extent that by Sunday moderators
were requesting at the beginning of panels that people turn
their cellular phones off and their pagers to mute.

"The rise of the right and the fundamentalists, a boom and bust
economy and the largest debt on the planet. Where is America
going? Factionalism and terminal decline? Or are these
problems only temporary--will America rediscover global
leadership and turn outwards again?"

["We" and "us" in the following refer to the United States.]

Young said that the panel would focus on the United States for
next thirty years, and asked the panelists for three scenarios
each: very likely, moderately likely, and least likely.

Haldeman said that the least likely is that the United States
would get a single vision and become the moral and economic
leader of the world. The most likely is that we would spend
money on small, disastrous wars until we became a Third World
country. In between is his prediction of the primacy of
fundamentalist religion (he note that there are a lot of
new churches being built in the South). What Haldeman said he
would like to see would be a slow increase in respect for
education rather than for accumulating money.

Steele said that the 20th Century is called the "American
Century," but that it is unlikely this will continue.
Currently, Steele said, the United States is "the tough guy on
the block that nobody wants to play with." In the future, the
United States won't dominate affairs; the European Community or
Japan will. For one thing, "Every four years a whole bunch of
zeroes come in who want to be President of the United States." Also,
the United States won't completely break up, but some
states may secede. For example, five or six years ago, Vermont
had a debate and a non-binding vote, and voted to secede.
There is also a movement in the Pacific Northwest (Washington,
Oregon, and northern California, as well as parts of Canada) to
form Cascadia. Certainly, Steele says, no one wants to become
a state, citing the recent Puerto Rican referendum and the
separatist movement in Guam. So in 2095 (so much for "focusing
on the next thirty years") there will probably be forty to
forty-five states, not fifty-one.

Turtledove saw the most likely scenario as a rough continuation
of status quo. He didn't see a rosy future, saying, "God knows
the United States of America has its problems," and its
emphasis on short-term results exacerbates the other problems
of racial/economic problems. But he thinks we may have more
than fifty states, because some of the Canadian provinces might
join the United States if Canada breaks up. He also observed
that this was the "American Century" because "we built up our
industrial base over two world wars and haven't had the living
crap kicked out of us at least once." (Someone in the audience
pointed out that Switzerland and Sweden also avoided getting
the crap kicked out of them.) The key question may be if we
have learned the lesson of Vietnam (and stay out of wars we
can't win).

Young said that he believed there was a hundred-year cycle of
domestic upheaval that the Unite States follows (the Whiskey
Rebellion in the 1790s, strife in the 1890s, and now unrest in
the 1990s). Frankly, I think he has too few data points to
generalize. He said, "Reform is the ideological goal toward
which we want to move," but no one agrees on what it is. So
everyone comes up with insane ideas on how to reform. He also
foresees lots of technological revolutions at hand (e.g., a
bio-technological one) with ethical, moral, economic, and other
implications. These revolutions are more market-driven than
previous revolutions, though. Young also asks, "If we are
entering into a period in which literacy is primarily dependent
on the computer, is it likely that we will build a new kind of
society built on a class structure based on [the skills of]
reading, writing, and typing?"

Young somewhat agreed with Turtledove, saying that the most
likely scenario is that we fumble along. He believes the
Religious Right will eventually collapse because, he said,
Jesus will not return in 2000. (I suspect it will hang on
until at least 2033 or 2034, but maybe the magic of the round
number 2000 will overcome historical logic. There are
certainly groups who have predicted the end of the world in the
past, and survived as a group even when it didn't happen.)

Turtledove noted that Young had a baby-boom perspective in that
Young appeared to believe that rough economic equality and
equality of opportunity are the norm. This is not a God-given
right, Turtledove observed, or even very common.

Steele said that the microelectronics revolution is a
double-edged sword, and "Newt Gingrich's solution [to the
economic problems some people would have in accessing the Net]
of giving everyone a laptop computer is absolutely asinine." (Young
then noted that Sturgeon's Law applies to Gingrich's
ideas.) Steele said that the computer revolution has brought
back the salon, conversation, and letter-writing, albeit in
somewhat different forms. And it may even bring back literacy:
even smart people look idiotic if their posts are full of
grammatical errors.

Haldeman saw as fairly likely an apocalyptic future. For
example, he talked to the War College about military futures in
2020, predicting the "dis-urbanization" of the United States
following terrorist nuclear or biological attacks on cities. We will
have virtual cities instead. As far as the problems of the
information superhighway requiring that people have computer
equipment, Haldeman said there was an obvious parallel to the
interstate highway system, which requires that people have a
car to use it directly, but clearly benefit even if they don't.
(For example, their groceries get to market faster and
cheaper.)

As far as literacy goes, Haldeman thought we would skip over
that to voice-recognition systems, leading to a discussion of
how soon we actually would have such systems. Young claimed
that "voice recognition is one of the hardest nuts to crack." Haldeman
countered that they used to claim computers wouldn't
be able to play decent chess or speak a sentence in this
century. Of course, only time will tell.

Young said that the issues the panelists needed to look at to
make predictions are the "functional questions" such as energy
problems. Haldeman said the answer to the energy problems was
cold fusion, getting a big laugh. Steele said fusion--hot
or cold--would help, but thought the answer was solar power
satellites and mining the moon, and said that Japan and Germany
are actually planning to do something like this. Haldeman
responded that in his upcoming book The Forever Peace
(must everything have a sequel?) he has "warm fusion."

Turtledove noted that history has shown that if you absolutely
run out of a resource, you will figure out how to make do
without it somehow, and gave the example of whale oil in the
19th Century. Of course, he also observed that our problems in
solving the energy crisis are due in part to the fact that "for
the last twenty years, we're been afraid of fuel which contains
atoms in any way." (Steele said he had once seen a protest
sign that said, "No atoms in New Hampshire.") The problem with
fossil fuels, Steele claimed, was "they're not making
dinosaurs like they used to," to which Turtledove replied, "In
Congress? Are you kidding?"

Someone asked about the "new world order" and Haldeman said
that the phrase was deceptive: the world won't change in an
orderly fashion; we won't change until we have to. We are a
nice people, but bumbling, and war-like, and we have killed
more people than Nazi Germany. (Turtledove later pointed out
that Stalin and Mao were probably ahead of us as well. And one
needs to look at equivalent periods of time--is Haldeman
comparing two hundred years of our history to shorter periods
of others'?) Turtledove also said in defense of the United
States, "God knows we're not perfect but for the pack of
bumblers we are, we haven't done too bad."

Steele said, "The nastiness is surface detail, [and] a lot of
cooperation happens under the surface." He told the story of
seeing Congressmen fighting bitterly on the floor of Congress,
then going into the men's room afterward and planning their
golf game together, to which Young noted, "I've heard of
standing in the middle of a pissing match before...."

Someone in passing quoted S. I. Hayakawa as saying, "The reason
we have a two-party system instead of a three-party system is
that the latter has never worked."

Haldeman and Turtledove talked about one of the downsides of
being a super-power: "You have to pay for all this stuff.
That's why there's not a Soviet Union any more; they couldn't
pay for it."

Someone in the audience asked if it was possible that the
United States would solve their energy problems by learning to
conserve, using public transit, etc. The quick answer was "no"
(though I will point out that in the United States we have more
recycling of Styrofoam, glass, and other trash than I see here
in Britain). Turtledove pointed out that public transit
doesn't work in United States because of the spread-out scale
of cities, and that this diffuseness is not really appreciated
by Europeans. Steele said that in fact we did start
conserving, to the extent that we brought about the failure of
the nuclear industry, which had been predicated on the
assumption that the use of electricity would increase, or at
least stay level. But instead we started using more efficient
appliances and decreased our usage.

Someone else claimed that the United States was more
energy-efficient for its standard of living than any other
country. (How does one actually measure that?)

An audience member said that the panel was ignoring that the
rest of the world exists. Then she went on to talk about
energy problems, saying that the rest of the world will use
energy to get at the United States. Someone else asked about
illegitimacy: "Is this as big a problem as some of the
politicians say it is?" Turtledove replied, "Nothing is as big
a problem as some of the politicians say it is." Haldeman
thought that there was a problem with the break-down of the
"nuclear family," although he didn't think that marriage was a
necessary ingredient; two people bringing up a child together
with or without benefit of a marriage license was what he was
talking about. Of course, he didn't completely define what he
meant by a nuclear family.

Steele said that in spite of all the negative comments, he has
faith in coming generation. He said that he finds young people
today are more interested in sciences than they used to be. And
he also said that he is seeing less drug use at concerts, to
which Haldeman responded, "They just don't offer it to you any
more."

To wrap up, Turtledove suggested that people who feel the
United States interfered in Iran, Chile, and Guatemala (as
someone suggested earlier) compare and contrast those with
other situations such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And
Haldeman noted one pitfall when he observe, "People like me are
not paid to think in optimistic terms." But in spite of that,
he personally remains somewhat optimistic.

We then spent an hour or so talking to our friend Pete
Rubinstein, who always has bizarre travel stories to tell. I
also manage to determine that the panel on Timebinders that I
was scheduled for had been canceled, which I had guessed by
noticing that it did not appear on my schedule or the program
grid. (It later resurfaced with a single panelist on Monday.)
There was free wine provided at the entrance to the hall
containing the Dealers Room, Art Show, and other displays, I
suppose in conjunction with the opening ceremonies.

I also left a message for a German fan who is producing an
alternate history issue of his fanzine. It's DM8, and since I
have some left-over DM from our stop-over on the way to India,
I figure it's easier to pay him cash now than to try to send
him a check or something later. (In fact, I did find him and
gave him DM10, getting 90p change.)

"A talk on sequels to The Time Machine, from the first
anonymous sequel in 1900 through Jeter, Priest and Dr Who."

This being the centenary of H. G. Wells's Time Machine,
there were several program items focusing on The Time
Machine in specific and Wells in general, of which this was
the first.

Baxter began by restating the direction of his talk: "What if
Wells had written a sequel or prequel, and what have other
authors done?" In 1897, Wells published "In the Days to Come,"
later developed into When The Sleeper Wakes, with upper and
lower levels. (One wonders if this is where Lang got his idea
for Metropolis.) But Wells was not as "strong" as he
might have been. For example, Baxter said that Wells depicted
horrors of lower levels more or less as "fist fights on
Saturday night."

Baxter also said that in "Chapter 11: The Further Vision,"
Wells shows the possibilities of the future, with the crab-like
monster and the giant white butterfly. This vision of a
"terminal beach" has become a regular metaphor in science
fiction. But the first draft of 1887 ("The Chronic
Argonauts"), serialized in 1894, had an extra stop between
Weena and the beach, with something between a rabbit and a
kangaroo, as well as an immense centipede. The traveler
speculates that these are remnants of humanity, and it may be
that the crabs and butterflies are also. And again, the round
thing the Time Traveller finds on the beach is another aspect
of man's devolution.

Wells later wrote "The Man of the Year Million," where man has
heads and hands more greatly developed than now, and bodies
less developed. (This idea was later adopted by Olaf
Stapledon, who must have read Wells's works, for part of
Last and First Men.) Wells still later used echoes of
this idea in his Selenites, and possibly even his Martians, but
he wanted to be somewhat ambiguous regarding this in The
Time Machine. He also cut out an episode in the year
12,000, and other sections as well. But Baxter said that the
round thing was the "Man of the Year Million stranded on the
Terminal Beach."

Baxter speculated that one reason Wells was fascinated by this
idea of the supremacy of the mind over the body was that Wells
himself was sickly, or as Baxter put it, "Wells was alive in
mind trapped in an ailing body."

Baxter then went on to discuss other authors' sequels to The
Time Machine. (Some spoilers occur in these descriptions.
You have been warned.) He said that the best known is probably
K. W. Jeter's Morlock Night (1978). This may be true in
the United Kingdom, but I suspect it is not the case in the
United States. In this, we discover that the Time Traveller
missed the smarter Morlocks the first time, and that the smart
ones are using the time machine to invade Victorian England.
It gets a little far afield after that: King Arthur is the only
one who can save England, etc. As Baxter said, "It's a fun
book, I suppose." There is not much more about the Time
Traveller, however, as he is killed on his return journey to
the future.

The first sequel to The Time Machine, however, was
apparently a 1900 book, Leeds Beatified. Baxter has been
able only to find one reference to it and couldn't find the
author's name or any other description.

The next sequel Baxter discussed was David Lake's The Man
Who Loved Morlocks (1981). In this, it is revealed that the
Eloi are actually dying off and the Morlocks are kidnapping
them to take them to laboratories underground to try to analyze
what is killing the Eloi and hence to save them.

Christopher Priest's Space Machine (1977) was described
as a cross between The Time Machine and The War of the
Worlds. (Baxter did not stick to a strict chronological
order.) This book is "recursive science fiction": it has
H. G. Wells as a character. In fact, this has been done
several times since, resulting in a blurring between Wells
and the Time Traveller. Baxter noted here that one thing that
readers need to keep in mind is that while the landscape of the
base story The Time Machine, and that of The War of
the Worlds, was indeed familiar to Wells's readers in the
1890s, it is an alien landscape to us now. He also said that
Priest does not resolve what happens to the Time Traveller.

In what Baxter described as Michael Moorcock's "Multiverse"
series, there is a trilogy which is a sequel to The Time
Machine: "The Dancers at the End of Time" (1972-1976),
comprising An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, and
The End of All Songs. Baxter described this as a comic
epic of a decadent future in which Moorcock's hero meets Wells,
and the Time Traveller becomes a time tourist in a chronomnibus
in a variety of time lines.

Other sequels mentioned briefly included Eric Brown's
"Inheritors of Earth" (1990) and Brian Stableford's "Hunger &
Ecstasy of Vampires" (1995). I recently reviewed the latter on
the Internet and highly recommend it.

In the visual media, Baxter mentioned Time After Time
(1979) in which Wells has built a time machine and follows Jack
the Ripper in it to modern-day San Francisco. There was also
an episode of Dr. Who, "The Time Lash," which has
H. G. Wells as a character, and has him get the idea for the
book The Time Machine from what happens to him in the
story. And an episode of Lois & Clark has Wells as an
inventor of time machine visiting a utopia founded by the
descendents of Superman. (Baxter described this as "postmodern
meta-fiction.")

Baxter said at this point that one reason that many sequels in
the popular media confuse Wells with the Time Traveller is that
"a lot of people outside the science fiction world don't read
much Wells these days." I would note that the same is true
in the SF world; I suspect most people who started
reading science fiction in the last twenty years have not read
any Wells at all. Oh, they know about it (at least The Time
Machine and The War of the Worlds), but have they
actually read it?

Baxter said that the strangest sequel was probably Egon
Friedell's Return of the Time Machine (1946, published in
an English translation by DAW in 1972). This is an exploration
of the scientific and philosophic implications of time travel.
It has a narrative frame somewhat like the original, with an
account of the second journey into time. The Time Traveller
tried to go back to 1870, but couldn't, so he went forward to
1995 (a 1995 not much like ours, of course). Then he went
forward to 2123, still trying to pick up enough momentum to
break through back to 1870.

Baxter said this book might have been written as early as the
1920s, and that Friedell committed suicide in 1938 because of
his Jewish ancestry when Austria was seized by Nazis.

Baxter then talked about his own recent book, The Time
Ships (published recently in the United Kingdom, but not
yet in the United States). In this, the Time Traveller changes
the future by his actions and reportage in Wells's time.
Baxter said this project attracted him because "people say that
science fiction lacks characters but the Time Traveller is a
great character." In fact, Baxter feels that The Time
Machine is emerging as perhaps Wells's greatest novel.

Mark asked Baxter about George Pal's novelization of Time
Machine II, a proposed sequel to the film. Baxter had never
hear of it, so Mark will be sending him information on it.

Someone asked about the recent British Post Office stamps
honoring Wells. Baxter liked them, though I would have
preferred a more Edwardian feel rather than the modern look.
(Mark says these are honoring the sub-genres of science fiction
that Wells created, rather than Wells himself.)

Baxter said he would now like to do a book about time
paradoxes, and to push the limits of time travel: for example,
to have time travelers from our time found a human colony fifty
million years ago, to use time travel to get oil from the
Devonian, etc.

Baxter mentioned he had thought of doing time travel in a
Dr. Who book, but decided that was not for him. Getting
authorization for The Time Ships was not difficult, and
there were no legal problems with any of Wells's thirty-six
descendents. In the United Kingdom, all of Wells's work is still in
copyright, since copyrights run until fifty years after the
death of the author, and soon (starting in a year or so)
seventy-five, leaving everything in copyright until 2016. In
the United States, however, most of his science fiction works
are in public domain.

However, no one is sure who has the film rights now, so a film
is unlikely unless someone wants to spend a lot of effort
untangling them.

After this we got together with our friend Hannu Pajunen from
Finland and went to dinner at the Jade Dragon. Afterwards we
tried to go to:

"[The panelists] look at scientific misconceptions that authors
have inadvertently promoted to the extent that they have
become 'common knowledge' amongst readers. We're not talking about
obvious scientific errors, but rather the more subtle
mistakes that slip by both author and reader. Examples include:

Superconductors also have no thermal resistance

FTL travel is possible if you 'get around' travelling at c

Single-molecule objects or wires are indestructible"

Well, we walked back to this after dinner, in the rain, but
couldn't find the hotel! Apparently it is visible only from
one side of the block, which is not quite what the map
indicated. At any rate, I figured that it didn't pay to spend
a lot of time looking for it--by the time we found it, the
panel would be over.

Since we had no panels we wanted to attend until 1 PM, we went
to this free sneak preview of a new science fiction film
starring Brigitte Nielsen, Richard Moll, and John H. Brennan;
written by Nick Davis; and directed by William Mesa. It is
therefore Nick Davis we have to thank (?) for such lines as,
"[The crystal] is the soul of our culture; it is the antithesis
of our ways." (After the film, Iain McCord in the row in front
of us turned around and asked "What is antithesis?" My answer:
"The wrong word to use in that sentence.") I haven't seen a
movie this bad since Ice Pirates and had it been in the
SECC I would have walked out, but since it was a considerable
taxi ride away I figured I might as well wait for Mark and
Kate.

When we did arrive at the SECC, I left messages for a bunch of
people I hoped to make contact with. The "Voodoo Message
Board" was conveniently placed on the Concourse, but the board
itself was "unpinnable"--it was what we call in the United
States beaverboard (but which undoubtably has some other name
everywhere else).

I did actually manage to meet one of the AT&T Science Fiction
Club members from Dundee (Stephen Massie); there may have been
others at the convention, but as day members, since they
weren't on the message board lists. We were supposed to get
together with Carl Aveyard from Leeds on Monday, but that fell
through.

I also talked to George "Lan" Laskowski a bit, and we kept
running into him at various times throughout the convention.

"How might history have been affected by changes in the way
technology developed, and how could alternate history have
influenced technology?"

The more elaborate description given the panelists was:

"1. The way in which history might have been changed had
technology developed differently, e.g., WW2 with
better-developed radar or the Cold War without ICBMs to give
two recent examples.

2. How technological history might have been affected in
alternate historical paths, e.g., US technical progress had the
South won the Civil War, or aerospace if WW2 had never
happened."

[Many thanks to Mark for taking notes for this panel.]

Bradshaw began by asking the panelist about the first aspect:
how small changes in technology have had a big impact on
history. Turtledove cited the example of the invention of the
stirrup, which had a remarkable effect on riding and control,
and would have resulted in some battles coming out very
differently if it had been used in Alexandrian times. (I am
sure there is a frieze with a rider using a stirrup from a
period before it was assumed to have been developed, but Mark
thinks that what is theorized was that it didn't catch on at
that time. This would partially answer the question of why
someone didn't think of it before--they did, but maybe it
was tried in an imperfect form and people decided it wasn't
very useful.)

Baxter said in his next novel, Ares, will be base on a
small change in technological history, the idea that the Apollo
landings were followed by a Mars program. In our timeline, NASA
did advocate such a program, but the times were wrong: we were
involved in the Vietnam War, social programs were soaking up
the government's money, and so on. Still, it was very close,
and if Nixon had needed to go to Mars it could have been done,
and wouldn't have cost much more than the shuttle. This was
all very interesting, but it didn't actually address the
question of what would be different now.

Leeper mentioned technology in Asia, saying that many times it
could have moved toward more progress, and had a big effect on
history. For example, China had a navy at one time, but burned
it because the Emperor decided there was nothing outside of
China worth going to. And Japan had an opportunity in the 17th
Century to adopt Western technology but instead banned it and
closed their doors to the West for two hundred years. If one
considers how far they have advanced in the hundred years since
they did adopt Western technology, where would they be if they
had started two hundred years earlier?

McMurray said his education was in mathematics, not technology
or history, so he tended to look for things that might have
been observed earlier. He gave the example that dairy maids
didn't get smallpox, and asked what might have happened if
vaccination had been around earlier. I noted that in Turkey,
old women had been "vaccinating" people against smallpox for
centuries, but Jenner gets the credit for adopting what others
had been doing. Turtledove noted that in Turkey they used
actual smallpox and hoped for a mild case instead of a deadly
one, while Jenner used cowpox, which was considerably safer.
In any case, had vaccination started earlier, it would have
made a great difference, at least in Europe. McMurray claims
it could have been eradicated sooner, but I am skeptical of
that--there was a lot more than just the knowledge of how to
vaccinate against smallpox that allowed the disease to be
eradicated throughout the world.

McMurray also said that the yoke could have been invented
earlier. The Roman Empire, for example, didn't have the yoke,
which was why you needed so many horses to pull just a small
chariot. McMurray added that they seemed to have the concept
in some ways, but never applied it. (Oddly enough, less than a
week later, we saw what were described as terrets from a yoke
in the National Museum in Cardiff, Wales, which were supposed
to be from between 50 B.C.E. and 50 C.E.) Leeper added that
the same was true of the wheel in the Americas, and said a
guide had claimed that while it was all right for children to use
wheels in toys, they were too similar to the sacred sun to be
used for work. Turtledove said it was probably not because of
any religious prohibitions, but because they had no suitable
draft animal. (Afterwards I wondered if llamas would have
worked--it seems to me I have seen them used to pull carts
now.)

Turtledove said that movable type has had a profound effect on
everyone, and was disovered, oddly enough, in China, which has
a poor language for it. (Actually, I had heard it was Korea,
which does have an alphabetic language.) Had it been developed
sooner in the West, things would be very different. Of course,
for many of these suggestions of discovering or developing a
technology sooner, one wonders if "very different" just means
that we would be where we are sooner. This probably would have
been an interesting direction to go off in. For example, if
there had been movable type in the time of the Crusades, would
the spread of the printed word have changed the course of them?
If there had been better disease control in the 14th Century,
would the rise of the middle class and the mechanization of
tasks been delayed because there was no great "die-off" in
Europe? (Of course, one must also ask if this mechanization
wasn't necessary before disease control could be
perfected enough to have the desired effect.) However, the
panel didn't follow through on this train of thought.

Baxter said that when he began Anti-Ice, he realized that
an easy-to-handle antimatter would not have helped, because the
Victorians would have no way to use it, so he had an anti-ice
comet hit the moon (and Antarctica) instead. And trying to
have the Victorians do space travel was difficult. They would
have to have some way of making the ship airtight, and some way
of recycling their air. And Bradshaw added that even with
the plans, the jet engine could not be developed until
materials for it had been made, but that radar could have been
developed from World War I technology. Along the lines of this
"single-point" technology, Turtledove said that the Germans
knew about radar, but were not aware of implications, which is
almost standard: look at the tank. Leeper said that was true
and that basically they were fighting with the same tactics as
previous wars, in spite of having such weapons as tanks which
required different approaches.

Baxter said the main problem the Greeks had with using any
technology they developed was that they did not have the
scientific method, so they had no way to test a hypothesis, or
even the concept of doing so. That is why they thought heavy
objects fell faster than light ones, though admittedly the fact
is that most of the light ones they observed (such as feathers)
probably did appear to fall slower (due to air resistance).
Still, the fact that any sort of labor was beneath the
aristocracy would have limited the amount of testing they would
be willing to do, so developments such as Hiero's Engine
remained isolated curiosities. Baxter said it needed a social
invention: the scientific method. Leeper said she thought this
was more a scientific invention than a social one, but everyone
agreed that it was needed. In any case, L. Sprague de Camp
wrote about a time traveler trying to teach the scientific
method to Aristotle in "Aristotle and the Gun"; needless to
say, it did not work out as planned.

Baxter also suggested that going back to the Civil War and
giving one side the Sten gun would have interesting effects,
since they would have some idea how to use it, but not how to
make it. Turtledove naturally noted that in The Guns of the
South he used AK-47s. He even had his researchers try
loading them with black powder, with the results described in
the book. Leeper said that much of this was encapsulated in
"Hawk Among the Sparrows" by Dean McLaughlin, a classic story
in which a jet plane somehow gets thrown back in time to World
War I, before jet fuel, before its heat-seeking missiles could
find anything to seek, before there were any planes of a sort
that its radar could detect, and when all the other planes
could out-maneuver it. (Eventually it uses its sonic boom to
shatter the other planes, however.)

Bradshaw asked how history might have been different without
the catalyst of some wars. Wars provide a catalyst, he said,
so what might things be like if there hadn't been a World War
II? (This was drifting away from the technological aspects.)

Baxter said that one would need some basic changes in Germany
to have no World War II, and Leeper agreed that you would have
to come up with a scenario without Naziism. She said that without
World War II, however, there would be many social changes from
our time, or rather, there would not have been the social
changes that World War II brought about: women working outside
the home, changes in race relations, and so on. The GI Bill
led to a lot more people going to college, which led to further
changes. (For that matter, without World War II, it's not
clear what if anything would have pulled the United States out
of the Depression.) These are all very Americentric, of
course.

Turtledove said that World War II was the first time there was
government-directed scientific research, but Bradshaw said it
existed in World War I when Germany had its supply of guano
(used to make nitrates) cut off and needed to develop
artificial nitrates. Later, someone in the audience pointed
out that the British navy was paying people in the 19th Century
to build chronometers, and Turtledove recalled that the tyrant
Dionysius paid inventors to come up with catapults.

McMurray said that without World War II, there might have been
a Cold War with Germany. I'm not sure--a Cold War requires
some reason not to start a hot one, and without World War II,
we wouldn't have had the atomic bomb.

Bradshaw returned to the idea of the way in which society looks
on technology. In Greece there was a slave class to do all the
work, but in Elizabethan times, there was a working class that
could better its position through effort. Turtledove said that
the major shift was the Industrial Revolution, since that was
when someone could see change in his or her own lifetime, and
different often looked better. This caused a change in
attitudes toward artisans. Leeper noted that the Black Death
brought a big cultural change, as an "underpopulated" Europe
started using more efficient methods to do what had been done
by brute strength before.

Baxter said that there is one type of change we are not
familiar with, though it shows up in science fiction a lot,
that of the crypt with the ruins of a previous civilization, or
often that of bits of spaceships used by primitives.

Someone asked how difficult it would be for someone in the room
to go back and change something (assuming a time machine, I
suppose). Turtledove said, "Keep it simple," and I said the
hardest part might be to avoid being burned as a witch through
most of history. Bradshaw said that one could have the biggest
impact by pointing out the wrong turnings. McMurray gave the
example of a simple invention that would probably be quickly
adopted: everyone in the room could invent movable type.
Leeper suggested the concept of zero and place notation, but
McMurray said this had been known for quite a while before its
adoption, but was avoided because it made it easier for people
to "fiddle the accounts."

Baxter felt that the Battle of San Jacinto could easily have
been tipped. Someone in the audience suggested stopping the
assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but McMurray
pointed out that Europe in 1914 was just itching for an excuse
for World War I, and would have found something else. The
audience member said the technology might have been different
with a delay, but Turtledove reiterated that war was
inevitable. Leeper suggested that a war without so much
chemical warfare might have resulted in more chemical warfare
in World War II, unless the solution to World War I also
precluded World War II.

An audience member accused us of talking as if technology
inexorable, but claimed things would have changed if there had
been no Einstein. Bradshaw responded that Einstein was
ahead of his time, but his discoveries would have happened
fairly soon anyway, because people had already observed too
many anomalies in Newtonian physics.

Leeper observed that, for example, if Newtonian calculus hadn't
caught on, Leibnitz's would have, and Leibnitz had a better
notation (at least according to Mark Leeper).

Someone commented about what might have happened if Germany had
developed the atomic bomb first. One has to postulate
something that could lead to that, and that means either a much
different way of doing the research, or of Germany not driving
all their Jewish physicists out, and the latter change would
probably have far more interesting causes, and results, than
just the bomb.

Someone in the audience reiterated what the panelists had
hinted at, that it is the technological change that people have
a use for that gets adopted. Turtledove noted that movable
type reached the Ottoman Empire and in the first hundred years,
only a hundred books were printed, because the Ottoman Empire
was not ready or willing for large-scale information exchange
McMurray said that relativity didn't really have much practical
application either at first, so a few years' delay in its
discovery would not make a lot of difference. Leeper observed
that in the case of many technological inventions, you find six
or seven people all working on the same thing. Edison, for
example, stole a lot of inventions from other people, though
Turtledove said Edison did invent sound recording on his own.

Baxter thought another interesting, if overlooked, invention
that could have been introduced at any time was double-entry
bookkeeping: it was the powerhouse behind the Italian
businessmen. Someone on the panel noted that L. Sprague de
Camp had that invention introduced much earlier in his Lest
Darkness Fall.

An audience member said he still thought that inventions coming
late would be of interest. Along these lines, Bradshaw
suggested that without the development of the rocket in World
War II there would have been no development of nuclear weapons
(with no effective way to deliver them), and no real space
program, but someone said that rocket travel would have come
eventually.

McMurray said that if canals had been developed later that
would have delayed a great deal; one audience member said that
one thing it would have delayed was the compulsory buying of
land by the government.

There was a discussion of the Romans. An audience member said
that if Archimedes had survived, things would have been
different, and this was possible since his death was somewhat
accidental--the Romans had specifically said he was to
remain alive. McMurray claimed the Romans were not
technologically advanced, but Turtledove said, "You would be
surprised." Apparently there has been a Roman pump found with
a tolerance in tenths of a millimeter. Leeper asked if Babbage
didn't have parts problems, and McMurray said Babbage's problem
was that he could not find materials of sufficient strength,
and that his search for such materials had a great effect on
British engineering. Someone in the audience asked what might
have happened if Babbage had succeeded, to which Leeper
replied, "Read The Difference Engine." Baxter said his
first experience with calculating machines had was with those
that had turn cranks, and Bradshaw noted that the first
application was cryptography, not the sort of data manipulation
postulated by Gibson and Sterling. Leeper noted that computers
would have been very useful in ballistics, and Mark Leeper in
the audience mentioned calculating trigonometric functions.
Someone noted that the Manhattan Project used dozens of people
performing sequential calculations to achieve results similar
to computers. Leeper said another story along these lines was
Sean McMullen's "Soul of the Machine," about a machine that used
no electricity but instead had
hundreds of people doing calculations and pulling on ropes and
levers.

Bradshaw asked if all ideas will be investigated sooner because
so many people working on them. McMurray thought not, saying
we still need to have people who have insights. Turtledove
agreed, saying, "We will come up with surprises a good while
longer." Leeper said that when things were primitive and basic
it was clear which way to go, but now with more possibilities
there will be more ways to go, so not all of them can be
investigated.

"A talk by Brian Stableford on how to achieve the perfect
science fictional climax. If the archetype of all fiction is
the sexual act, what types of climax are uniquely appropriate
to hard science fiction stories?"

[In the discussion below, Stableford was talking primarily
about hard science fiction, even when he referred to it without
the qualifier. The thoughts expressed here are Stableford's
even if not stated explicitly at each point; I have
interpolated very few of my own comments.]

It was difficult to tell from the title and description whether
this was a serious panel or a humorous one, and even after
attending I can't be completely sure, but it did seem to take
at least a reasonably straight approach to its subject.

The talk was based on comments by Robert E. Scholes in
Fabulation and Metafiction
in which he considers the climax of a story as an
"orgastic act," complete with tension and resolution. (The
fact that the tech crew was stroking the microphones to test
them during this section of the talk did not go unnoticed by
either Stableford or the audience.

Stableford said that his talk was not only a discussion of the
two types of climax, but also a pun on "hard science fiction." The
basic climaxes in genre fiction are expected (the boy and
the girl get together at the end of a romance story, the good
guy beats the bad guy in a shoot-out at the end of the western,
the murderer is revealed at the end of a detective story,
etc.). Twist endings require this expected ending to exist, else
there's nothing to have a twist on.

(At this point, they got the microphone working, but Stableford
said this meant that "we missed the foreplay.")

Stableford defined the two basic endings. There are
normalizing endings, in which the situation is returned to that
of the beginning of the story. An example of this would be a
story in which some evil force enters a town but is eventually
defeated, and everything returns to the way it was. There are
wish-fulfillment endings (also called "eucatastrophes" by
Tolkien), in which the situation of the hero is bettered.
Examples of this would be stories in which the hero gets the
girl, or wins the election, or acquires wealth, or gains
revenge. In terms of the parallel of Scholes, sexual orgasm is
essentially normalizing, but some are eucatastrophic.

But hard science fiction stories encounter awkward logical
problems in achieving these types of climaxes. For one thing,
there are no stereotypical science fiction endings except as
they are also of other genres. That is because science fiction
is about the socially transforming effects of science, and
these are of a different nature than the problems in other
genres. Normalizing endings assume that status quo is both
desirable and securable, and assume that change is bad--both
of these assumptions are directly contrary to the underlying
philosophy of most hard science fiction. In fact, Stableford
noted, a show such as The X-Files, with its repeated
normalizing endings leads to paranoia rather than satisfaction.
Accepting the inevitability of change was part of early
science fiction, and this is still true of much of it today.

But conventional eucatastrophic endings have their own
stereotypes (e.g., get rich, get revenge, get love). Though
editors often favor these (John W. Campbell comes to mind),
extrapolators often question whether our ideas of betterment
are arbitrary. In fact, Stableford says, science fiction which
refuses to question our existing values in eucatastrophic
endings are cowardly. Hard science fiction demands
eucatastrophic endings, but these endings cannot satisfy the
reader if they cling to contemporary accepted values.

The history of eucatastrophic endings in science fiction goes
back a long way. Edgar Rice Burroughs constructed "daydream
fantasies" with such endings. Much early science fiction in
the pulps was dedicated to the "myth of technological
development as progress," and the technophilic Campbell
certainly promoted this ideal. The two key figures in the
analysis of plot in hard science fiction in the 1940s were
Robert A. Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard. Heinlein said that he
believed there were only two basic plots: boy meets girl, and
the little tailor. Then Hubbard pointed out a third: the man
who learns better.

The latter results in a climax of "climactic enlightenment," in
which the hero learns to place his life in the context of what
science had revealed. And hard science fiction since 1939 has
been a quest for new and more compelling eucatastrophic endings.

In hard science fiction, Stableford said, there are two types
of eucatastrophic endings. One is what he termed an existential
breakthrough: PSI, acquisition of new mental powers, etc. He
summarized these as, "The mentally blessed but conscientiously
meek to inherit the earth." The other is the "cosmic
breakout," involving rockets et al. Both of these usually
start in a claustrophobically narrowed society so as to
emphasize the breakthrough. (Cyberpunk is just a variation on
the cosmic, or extravagant, breakout.)

The cosmic breakout is closely linked to sexual act, and
Stableford attributes this to the male domination of hard
science fiction. The eucatastrophe of the cosmic breakout is,
as he describes it, essentially thrusting and penetrative.

Existential breakthrough stories also had sexual implications,
but they avoid the masculinity of the cosmic breakout and are
the other half of the masculine/feminine dichotomy.

Scholes thinks much popular fiction is as coarse as
"slam-bam-thank-you-mam" and he notes how often writing is
compared to prostitution. (Scholes had an even lower opinion of
science fiction, and once said to Kurt Vonnegut, "Among the
forms of popular fiction, science fiction was the lowest of the
low.") But Scholes goes on to say that "the act of fiction is
a reciprocal relationship--it takes two." His description
clearly sees the writer as male, and the reader as female, even
though he refers to both of them as "he."

Stableford feels that this low regard may be in some sense
justified by the failure of most science fiction to follow the
standards of characterization, mood, and so on that are applied
to mainstream fiction. For example, characterization requires
the author to fit a character to an environment, but in science
fiction the environment isn't even there yet. Other standard
techniques are equally difficult to apply to SF. The result is that
science fiction foreplay is significantly different from other
types. Other works construct realistic worlds with acts of
normalization, while science fiction requires acts of
differentiation. It is not the goal of the science
fiction author to paint our world accurately, but to paint a
world different from ours and emphasize the differences.

Another difficulty is that hard science fiction is usually
determined to extrapolate hard scientific principles, and
because of this, the world described is more tightly bound that
most fictional worlds. Indeed, most fictional worlds are
allowed more leeway than the real one (we know Rhett Butler did
not exist, but we allow him anyway).

According to Stableford, hard science fiction is judged on its
potency, its ability to maintain its hardness, and its ability
to penetrate the world, thereby reinforcing its masculine
nature.

Sexual and narrative climaxes need no further justification
other than their pleasure. But just as sexual climaxes serve a
function in the reproduction of the species, so narrative
climax is used to reproduce society and its mores. Readers
want good to be rewarded. If this does not happen, this
produces the feeling that is labeled as "tragedy." The
supposed improbability of the happy ending is artificial in the
fictional context, that is, no matter how unlikely the success
of the hero, we know that he will triumph. When the starship
Enterprise is attacked by Romulans on the television show, we
know that it will defeat them, no matter how large the odds
against it.

Which brings us to the deus ex machina. Religion and
magical fantasy are full of dei ex machina, i.e., completely
arbitrary happy endings of all the types discussed above. The
harder the science fiction, the less room one would expect for
dei ex machina, but this isn't what we see, because people
(such as Campbell) say the technophilic moral order ought to be
maintained at all cost. So hardness is confined to the early
stages of the story (or foreplay, as Stableford said). As the
stories progress, a metaphoric "divine wind" bursts forth to
set everything right.

In Greek drama, however, it is the god-like power itself which
matters; in hard science fiction, it is the source of the
power that matters--technology. It is said that hard
science fiction can insist that normality and moral order are
transient, and that this end justifies the means (i.e.,
unrealistic climaxes that show this). The opposing view to
this is that it's all essentially empty, and all we're getting
are "miracles in technological disguise."

Stableford said he wants to discover and disclose a third type
of climax. "L. Ron Hubbard was right--and wrong," he said.
The man who learned better exists and is the best of the
three plots, but Heinlein and Hubbard both misinterpreted this.
Both men wrote and formulated their lives on this pattern.
But Stableford noted, "We cannot know today what we will
discover for the first time tomorrow." So we can't make claims
about the next great breakthrough without making fools of
ourselves. The man who learned better works when we set these
tales in the past, but not as well in tales set in the future.

Stableford's answer is that we need to tell tales of men who
never lose sight of the desirability of learning better, even
if their successes are modest. These, he feels, are more
satisfactory because this is how growth really proceeds.
Progress is through the collective and collaborative efforts of
many people, not through greedy individuals and supermen.
Stableford said there are those who advocate avoiding the
climax altogether (just as there are those who advocate the
same for the sexual act), but he finds this too extreme. We
must, however, be prepared to forsake the dramatics of the
explosive climax.

Stableford insisted that we must "look with suspicion upon all
the things we are bound to take for granted." In hard science
fiction, eucatastrophic endings must be ironic and skeptical.
"Satire is to be preferred to sermonizing." And in this leads
to a parallel with what could be described as unorthodox and
non-reproductive sex, in that its purpose is specifically not
the reproduction of society as it is.

Ritter began by saying, "History taught in schools is usually a
very dull business," explaining that there were no vampires, no
magic, etc. In other words, everything that makes fantastic
literature interesting is missing. So he became interested in
counter-factual histories (which oddly enough also rules these
out). Ritter makes a distinction between alternate histories
and counter-factual histories, and in fact his talk centered on
this.
Counter-factuals are distinguished by specific realistic change
points. To justify a purpose for this, Ritter said that the
laws of historical thinking define it as a science.

Ritter explicated four rules which separate counter-factuals
from parallel worlds, etc. These are:

Laws of Nature: i.e., no aliens, superpowers, etc.

Law of Historical Evidence: i.e., you cannot have a
counter-factual if there is no historical evidence of the
period (on which to base a factual, I suppose). Therefore
counter-factuals cannot have change points before 4000 years
ago or so. (The figure is Ritter's; I suspect Egypt's history
goes back further than that.)

Law of Effect: Things happening with no observation (e.g.,
Shangri-La) don't count, and if the timeline merges back into
our own (as in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court) it doesn't count either.

Law of Intention: The author must intend to write a
counter-factual. For example, James Bond is not a
counter-factual. In counter-factuals there
is usually a reference to our own world (as in "Isn't it nice
that X happened?"), or to famous people in different roles, or
to counter-factuals to their own world. This also means that
non-fiction that turns out to be wrong is not a
counter-factual. But Ritter considers just about every
fiction book as
alternate history, even if it is not counter-factual.

Ritter described three groups of material published on the
topic:

Wargaming: as used by the military. Ritter said he doesn't
like this, because people are described as numbers, and it sees
history only as battles.

Cliometrics: a new economic history based on explicit models of
human behavior. It still uses formulae, but relies on a causal
analysis of fact, e.g., "If slavery had not existed in America,
then the Civil War would not have been fought." Sometimes
people add a factor--if Hitler had invaded England--but
cliometrics does not do this; it only takes factors away.
These seem at first difficult to separate, but since
cliometrics uses numbers, it can only work if it has
numbers--it cannot make up numbers for additions, but can
"not use" existing numbers for deletions.

Wheels of If: addresses the question of the individual in the
stream of time. This is an area overlooked by the other two.

Ritter claims counter-factuals date from 1931 and J. C. Squire's
anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise (later published
under the title If, or History Rewritten). Ritter listed
many other articles, mostly in German, whose names I could not
understand. I will assume most of them appear in Robert
Schmunk's alternate history bibliography.

Ritter noted that although not the most popular change point,
World War I changed more governments than any other war.
Popular change points, working backward, include the Chinese
Revolution, World War II, World War I, the American Civil War,
the defeat of the Spanish Armada (here Ritter listed John
Brunner's Times Without Number, though earlier he had
said that book wasn't a counter-factual), the Black Death, and
the death of Alexander the Great. Two other possible change
points he mentioned were not often used were if the Irish
Christian Church broke from the Roman Church, and if the
Scandinavians conquered Europe. (The former was used in books
by L. Sprague de Camp, hence the title of the talk. The latter
was discussed in Arnold J. Toynbee's "Forfeited Birthright of
the Abortive Scandinavian Civilization," in A Study of
History, Volume II.)

All this, Ritter claimed, is part of the process of history
learning from science.

As part of the discussion, Michael Cule said that alternate
histories (counter-factuals) emphasize the consequences of our
actions. Alexei McDonald said that wargaming just says what
the player would get if he or she did something
different, not (for example) what Hitler would have gotten.
And perhaps we should distinguish commercial wargaming from
military wargaming. (I think Ritter was talking about military
wargaming, but in English anyway, the term covers both of
them.)

People pointed out that asking "what if X?" invariably leads to
"how X"? For example, asking "what if the Loyalists won the
Civil War?" leads to asking "how could the Loyalists win the
Civil War?" (Fooled you there, didn't I?)

Someone asked whether this didn't lead to questions of free
will versus determinism, and Ritter agreed that to some extent
it did. But he believes that history is primarily a flow. In
other words, in general he supports the "Tide of History" over
the "Great Man" theory. However, most counter-factuals deal
with specific people and not with more general causes. Could
this be because it's easier to postulate changes if individuals
can have large effects?

The talk ended on a sad note, as Ritter announced that John
Brunner had died of a stroke earlier today.

I went from this to the "High Road" party (for the Internet
mailing list), but apparently almost everyone had left already.
I did talk to Keith Lynch, who told me about the trials and
tribulations of bringing his bicycle from Washington to Glasgow.

(It was very difficult to hear this interview. Hall 3 had
paneling put up to divide it into four rooms and corridor space
around them. Unfortunately the paneling did not extend to the
very high ceilings, but only about half-way up (eight feet or
so). Yesterday there were no microphones, and no one could be
heard. Today they had installed the amplification systems, but
they don't work very well. And if there is more than one item
going on, they compete with each other.)

Since there was no party going on, I dropped in on this part way
through. Zicree was saying that it was Warners who insisted on
getting rid of O'Hare, not any sort of "mutual agreement" as
was described on the Net. Who knows what's accurate? However,
Zicree said that Warners usually doesn't interfere with the
series. In any case, Straczynski is a pragmatist, and is
willing to concede to Warners when necessary.

Zicree said that the networks getting more adventurous in what
they will run, and that some network executives even watch
The X-Files.

Someone in the audience asked about "gratuitous spaceship
shots." (I can agree with that description.) Zicree says
they're popular, and besides, they need to write scripts to
have crescendos before commercial breaks, and spaceship shots
make that easier. It's also fairly cheap: while the opening
credit sequence on Star Trek: Voyager cost
US$1,000,000, the Mars matte
shot on Babylon 5 cost only US$2,000 and took one
evening. This is almost definitely the death knell for models.

As far as how much the scriptwriters are told, Zicree said that
for "Survivors" he was merely told to have Garibaldi fall off
wagon, but not given any reason for that. Zicree says that in
general outside writers get the non-arc stories, so they don't
need a lot of information about future developments. Unlike
with other series, the Babylon 5 books and comic books
are canonical and do connect up with the television story.

Asked about contradictions in various on-going series, Zicree
said that they come in because everyone gets exhausted. Then
later, writers try to write something to cover up the
contradictions introduced.

Zicree is currently working on MagicTime. The premise of
MagicTime is that all the machines stop and magic comes
back; Zicree describes it as having a "mythic structure within
a modern context." He thinks that Straczynski's "five-year
plan" is a good length and is looking at something like that
for MagicTime.

He said something about bringing Kirk back in future Star
Trek film scripts. When someone pointed out that Kirk was
killed, Zicree said, "Kirk's dead, but so was Spock."

The rest of the evening was taken up with dinner at the Ashoka,
with a long wait beforehand and relatively slow service. I
guess that eating out is considered the evening's entertainment
here, not a quick prelude to something else.

"What makes a good anthology--the concept, the writers, the
story selection? How much does the need for a balance and a
complementary set of stories over-ride the quality of the
individual piece? How often do you have to turn away a good
piece because it just doesn't fit? When do you know if an
anthology is 'working'? And is the whole really more than the
sum of the parts?"

From this description this sounded like an interesting panel.
Alas, Crowther started by saying that he supposed a "good"
anthology was one that sold well, and most of the rest of the
hour turned into a marketing discussion. However, considering
that the audience barely outnumbered the panel (surprising,
with Resnick as a draw--it must have been the early hour),
it didn't disappoint a lot of people.

Crowther said he sees too many anthologies in the United States
but Resnick
replied that he thought we don't see enough, and would like to
see more opportunities for short fiction.

As far as marketing, Resnick said that if the publisher invests
enough money in paying the authors, they will spend a
reasonable amount on publicity to recoup their investment, but
usually this isn't the scenario. Instead, the best-selling
anthologies are the ones linked to movies. Even then,
publishers screw up. Resnick's Dinosaurs was delivered
in plenty of time, but missed Jurassic Park's opening by
three months, and Aladdin missed the opening of that film
by four weeks. These were both DAW, indicating the problem may
be specific to them, and the fact that Alternate Presidents
did make its window (albeit a larger one) supports this.
In October 1992 I saw Alternate Presidents in the front
window of a bookstore along with all the books by and about
Clinton, Bush, Perot, Gore, Quayle, and so on. It also got
US$20,000 from the Book-of-the-Month Club, which outbid the
Science Fiction Book Club by a considerable amount. (Usually
the Science Fiction Book Club can get any science fiction book
for a very small fee.)

Jones said that the editor at Penguin in the United Kingdom was
fired in part because she paid decent rates to authors. Jones
feels that word rate should be the same as for a novel, but
rarely is, and in fact, the United States small press pays as
much as British mainstream press for anthologies.

Garrett contrasted magazines with anthologies, claiming that
anthologies don't have as firm a deadline. (There was some
eyebrow-raising over this. I think it's probably true that the
deadline is slightly more flexible, but there is--or should
be--a deadline. I would mention Last Dangerous
Visions here, but since Resnick noted at the end that we had
gone through an entire hour on anthologies without mentioning
it, I guess I can't.)

Resnick said the difference was that anthologies are sold
around a theme, and are usually by invitation, while magazines
are usually not themed (except by accident or perhaps a special
issue) and open to everyone. Asked why anthologies are by
invitation only, Resnick went through the arithmetic: the
average anthology gets a US$8,000 advance for 100,000 words.
At the standard rate of 7 cents a word, that leaves only
US$1,000 for the editor, who almost invariably is splitting it
with Martin Greenberg. It takes about three weeks to do the
work involved if it is by invitation, resulting in an
annualized "salary" of under US$9,000, or an hourly rate just
slightly above US$4. If it's open and the editor has to read
through a slushpile, it's considerably lower.

Stewart said that publishers insist on having big names to put
on the cover, so you need to be sure you will have a few of
those in any case. And Jones said that you don't make money
editing anthologies unless you're very lucky or very prolific
(or a crook, Garrett added).

Jones feels most United States anthologies are junk, and wants
to see more open slots for new writers. Resnick pointed out
that he does publish new authors. He has done twenty
anthologies (though won't be doing any for a couple of years
because he can make more money writing), and they have had six
Hugo nominees, forty-one first stories, eight Campbell
nominees, and two Hugo nominations for him as best editor.

Stewart mentioned he tries to encourage new writers and so
sends personal rejection letters rather than form rejections.
Garrett joked, "No one did us any favors so why should we help
anyone else?" More serious is Resnick's philosophy (given at
ConAdian): we can't pay back the people who helped us, because
they don't need our help; we can only pay forward.

Crowther, returning to the marketing aspects, said that if you
go with a proposal without a theme, it's a difficult concept to
sell unless you are an established name--such as Robert
Silverberg--or a series--such as Bantam's Full
Spectrum). Jones mentioned that the themes get ridiculous,
and gave the theoretical example of "vampire angels," at which
point everyone on the panel pointedly bent over their pads
of papaer and wrote it down.

Garrett said that New Worlds in the United Kingdom had
problems with bookshops knowing where to file it: was it a
magazine or an anthology? Its numbering is high enough now
that it could easily confuse the bookseller; the latest one I
have is number 172, but I'm sure it's much higher than that
now. Garrett noted that now that Amazing is dead, New
Worlds is the oldest name in science fiction, having been
started in 1946. He didn't mention Weird Tales, but the
revitalization of that changed its name and now appears to be
dead as well.

Regarding getting name authors, Resnick says that one way he
does this is to let authors "double-dip" with their
award-quality stories; that is, he lets them sell the stories
to a magazine before book publication. This is a bit deceptive
to the reader, since the book usually claims all its stories
are new and written especially for the book, but it is not,
strictly speaking, dishonest, since the book publication delay
is why the story shows up elsewhere first. Me, I don't
care--if the story is that good, the author should get some
extra money and more visibility for it.

Regarding timing, Jones said his aim was to publish his big
anthologies right before summer vacations when people want
something like that to take. He also said that bargain book
reissues help. (We see that occasionally in the United States,
although seeing original anthologies published by Barnes &
Noble or other bookstores is more common.)

There was some discussion of the artistic end. Resnick best
explained the dilemma by saying, "As a writer you have to be an
artist until you write the words 'THE END,' then you have to
metamorphize into a businessman. With an editor, it's the
reverse."

There was a brief discussion of the short form versus the thick
novel or trilogy. My observation would be that not every
author is a Victor Hugo or a Leo Tolstoy. In fact, most
authors are not, but only some of them realize it and the rest
try to write 1500-page epics.

Someone suggested that magazines are actually the replacement
for general anthologies, but historically that doesn't make
sense. Magazines were around long before anthologies, and the
1950s were the height of both.

Someone else said that a factor in buying anthologies was their
trust in the editor. But Resnick noted that he will edit
anthologies that he has no interest in if Greenberg sells the
concept and asks him to edit. Still, I think Resnick has
enough pride that he will do a good job even if not inspired by
the editing Muse, whoever that might be. As Jones said, "If
your name is on the book, then you have to be able to stand up
and defend that book."

Resnick said that one factor in the decline of the anthology is
that the readership has changed: "More people reading
sub-literate trash based on media events than science fiction,"
which I suppose is why publishers like media tie-in
anthologies. Stewart added, "Publishing is run by
bean-counters who don't read books and [who] talk about product."

Resnick did observe that novellas by new authors are easier to
place in anthologies than magazines. "Magazines won't turn
over half an issue to a name they can't put on the cover." He
also told us to look for Brian Tetrick's "Angel of the Wall"
and Nick DiChario's story (the last one in Piers Anthony's
Tales of the Great Turtle). Resnick said that in an
anthology, the last position is the strongest, and the first
the second strongest.

There was some mention of one-author novella collections, and
Bantam publishes some stand-alone novellas by such well-known
authors as Robert Silverberg and Connie Willis. Young-adult
books are also closer to novella-length. But in general, short
stories (meaning shorter than 40,000 words) are dead outside of
the science fiction and mystery fields.

Asked what anthologies most influenced them, Garrett named the
Penguin science fiction anthology edited by Brian Aldiss
(adding that ironically he now edits Aldiss), Resnick named the
anthologies edited by Groff Conklin, Jones named the Pan
Book of Horror Stories and Dark Forces, and Stewart
named the John Carnell series "New Writings in SF."

Resnick closed by warning that the literary history of the
field will be lost if we can't convince publishers to reprint
some of the classic early anthologies.

Next I had to arrange for a bus from Heathrow to Cardiff. This
was not easy. I had the number for the National Express bus
company, and knew that the city code for it had been changed by
having a "1" prefixed, but I was getting some sort of message
about having dialed incorrectly. When I first tried calling,
it was in the very noisy Concourse, and I couldn't hear the
message. Here I found a quiet phone in the Moat House, and
discovered that all Perth numbers had been changed as well by
having a "6" prefixed. So I tried that number. But it
had been changed to something entirely different, with a city
code I didn't recognize. I called the operator. It turned out
to be a special code for a number that costs the same from
anywhere, and I finally got through and made the reservations
for the bus. The three-hour bus ride is #27 for a return
ticket each, versus something like #55 for a two-hour train
ride from Paddington--and we'd have to get to Paddington. I
made the reservations on our Visa card and arranged to pick up
the tickets at Heathrow when we got there.

After this I had some time to kill, so I dropped by the Green
Room, where I dried out my feet and shoes (it had been raining
fairly heavily this morning, and even though we took the
shuttle bus from the Marriott we got pretty wet just getting
there). I also listened to jan howard finder talking about
auctioneering, and chatted with Steven Glover.

"The deconstructions thread is a new concept for Worldcon
programming. To provide greater focus, we take a single work
and look at its genesis, evolution, content, ideas, and at the
author's view on it now. The format is somewhere between an
interview and a conversation, and the focus should be clearly
on the specific work."

Kincaid began by asking the obvious: "I want to ask how you
came to write this book."

"This was not a book I planned to write," Turtledove responded.
But Judith Tarr wrote him at one point about her new book,
saying that the "cover art [was] as anachronistic as Robert
E. Lee holding an Uzi." This led Turtledove to ask, "Who
would want to give Robert E. Lee Uzis? Time-traveling South
Africans?" And so it began.

Kincaid then asked about the problems involved in tackling
Civil War. Turtledove said that the main problem is that a lot
of people know a lot about it. As Turtledove put it, "I knew
the vast yawning depths of my ignorance." (I think he's being
too modest, or maybe he just does research really well.)

Was he nervous about stepping into an area that's been very
heavily worked by science fiction authors? "Somewhat nervous,
but I knew I could create my own place."

Turtledove said he started in the spring of 1864 in order to
make the South examine the assumptions under which they gained
their independence. By that point, the South had seen black
troops, had experienced the occupation of some Southern areas,
and had seen the (at least theoretical) emancipation of the
slaves in states still in revolt. As Turtledove said, he
wanted the book to say, "You got everything you thought you
wanted. You're so damned smart, what are you going to do with
it?" (As Turtledove explained later, the Emancipation
Proclamation did not apply to Northern slave
states--Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware--or the occupied
South.)

Turtledove said he had read Lee's letters twenty-five years
ago, and based almost all of what Lee said in The Guns of
the South on what Lee actually wrote. There is a lot of
documentation on the Civil War, Turtledove said, not like
Byzantine history which is a little piece of information here,
a little piece there, and a lot of leaps of inference.

Kincaid asked about the fact that revisionists now present Lee
as not such the great honorable gentleman, but Turtledove
disagreed. Turtledove explained, "I respect him as a man. He
had a great many admirable qualities, but he has a lot of
attitudes I don't agree with at all." He also added, "If the
South had won on their own, I don't think Lee would have been
as liberal as in my book." He explained that it was what he
called a "Hegelian relationship": the South Africans being so
racist served to make the Southerners in his book less so
because they saw the horror of the extrapolation of their
racism.

Turtledove also said that there would have been emancipation in
the South even if they had won in 1862 but it would have taken
longer, and gave Brazil as an example of a slave-holding
society that phased it out without a war.

Kincaid asked about the lack of technology in the South.
Turtledove said he had help from Chris Bunch on how the South
would have tried to reproduce the AK-47, and they concluded
that it would have been possible for the South to reproduce it
as in the book.

Turtledove also noted that the South seceded on the basis of
states' rights, but became more draconian than the North (in
terms of conscription) and also more centralized than they
intended.

In any case, a Southern victory in 1864 would throw Northern
politics into turmoil. So, as Turtledove said, "I had
McClellan running as an act of ego, which he came equipped with
a large economy size of." And Turtledove's projections of vote
totals led to throwing election into House of Representatives,
but he felt that this would be considered unlikely by the
readers. As he said, "All history has to do is happen.
Fiction has to feel real too." Kincaid joked, "McClellan could
never have won the election; he would have just overestimated
Lincoln's votes and assumed he lost."

Turtledove noted, "One of the stupidest things the South ever
did was replace Joe Johnson with Fighting Joe Hood against
Sherman outside Atlanta."

Turtledove announced, "I do not ever intend to write a sequel
to Guns." His reasoning is that the changes he postulated are
so radical that it's too difficult to figure out which
possibilities are the most likely much further down the line.
But he is working on a different aftermath of a different
Southern victory. This one assumes General Lee's courier did
not lose Lee's General Orders #191. Hence there was no
Emancipation Proclamation, the South was recognized by England
and France, so the South eventually was recognized by the Union
as well. Then the Union allies with Germany in the late 1800s,
leading to the Quadruple Entente. In passing, Turtledove noted
that in 1914, Custer would have been seventy-five years old.

Turtledove talked a bit more about his research for the book.
As he explained, there are a lot of documents about Greek
history (for example), but the amount of detail/minutiae
available for the Civil War is far greater. But, "one of the
nice things you find out as a writer is that people will help
you for no good reason." He wrote someone asking about
information about the 47th North Carolina Regiment and the
person asked if he would like the regimental history and the
complete roster of that regiment, for US$30. Turtledove said
it was the best $30 he ever spent. The result is that all the
people in the book in that regiment are real.

And this includes the woman in the book who served in the
regiment in disguise. "There was a woman in the
regiment," and she was well enough documented that he could use
her. Other details include the high percentage of those dying
of disease, which was twice that of those dying of wounds. The
reason for this is that many North Carolinans (who had lived in
relative isolation) were not immune
to childhood diseases and died shortly after enlisting.

Regarding the South Africans in his novel: "Anyone willing to
go back in time and noodle with history to preserve a racist
state has a strong ideological commitment to begin with."

(At this point someone in the audience asked some question
about whether the 14th Amendment was actually legally passed.
The question seemed to be based on some theory that the state
legislatures passed it under coercion, but no one really wanted
to follow up on this complete side-track.)

In response to a question, Turtledove said he ignored time
paradoxes--he said he could always argue they are starting a
new branch and then going up that branch and down the old one
to get home.

Why the AK-47? Turtledove said it was produced in large
numbers and is the terrorist weapon of choice; it also will
take the most abuse of any weapon when used by amateurs.

There was some discussion of the war in the West, but I
couldn't follow it.

Someone asked how Turtledove could rationalize the invasion of
Canada, given the sea power of the British empire. But as
Turtledove noted, "Ruling the seas does you a limited amount of
good in a war against Canada." However, the beginnings of
independence for Canada came because "Britain decided it was a
good idea to start to create the semblance of an independent
country because of the United States's drum-beating" in the
real Civil War.

Turtledove also talked a bit about his new book, The Two
Georges, which he co-authored with Richard Dreyfuss. It is
set in the present in a world in which the American Revolution
did not happen, the Gainsborough painting is a secular icon,
and American separatists hijack it.

Someone asked why, when the South Africans have lost, they
don't they pull out through the time gate? Turtledove's answer
was that they still want to try to save the situation. Asked
about recent changes in South Africa, Turtledove said there
were "fewer malcontents than I expected," to which someone in
the audience responded, "Perhaps they all ran away in a time
machine."

What a fiasco! This panel seems to have been added at the last
minute. The two panelists introduced themselves as "Star Trek"
fans, and one was wearing a "SeaQuest DSV" T-shirt because
Spielberg's name had been among the ones listed in the
description.

To make a long story short, the panelists were totally unprepared,
and kept
asking the audience what the audience wanted to talk about.
When someone suggested Ray Harryhausen, the panelists thought
about it a moment and said, well, yes, they could talk
about films as well as television.

They, however, ignored the question and said something about
Gerry Anderson. They also said that the critics said
Waterworld was a flop and didn't give audiences a chance
to make up their own minds. (But it was.) They also claimed
that "Star Trek"'s vision was driven by the author. (I didn't
know that Roddenberry was an author?)

"Does technological growth mean genocide for native peoples?
This has been the rule for the last century, but are there
other better ways?"

I will insert my own observation here that occurred to me on
reading about this panel. We are the result of some cultures
being absorbed by other more technological ones. If no culture
had ever wiped out another, we wouldn't be here. And, as I
noted at one point, there have been previous cases of one
superpower trying to control the world and force its
government, religion, etc., on everyone else, and that was
imperial Rome. And certainly the Roman culture was more
advanced technologically than Greek or Middle Eastern culture,
and did in fact conquer them, legislate Roman ways, and
disperse the people. As I observed, this must be why we have
so many temples to Jupiter and Mercury, and why the religions
and customs of the Middle East have totally vanished. Or put
less sarcastically, which had the more lasting influence: the
technological conqueror or the native peoples of Judea?

But back to the panel.

Balen began by asking if it is possible to have technological
societies coexist with non-technological cultures? Marcus said
that there really seemed to be two parts to the question: "Is
genocide a bad thing? Yes. Is technology a bad thing? That's
harder to answer."

There was discussion of forcible change inflicted by the
over-culture. The example mentioned was that of child-napping
(basically) of American Indian children in the early part of
this century to be sent to boarding schools and taught
"American" ways. (A similar example would be the conscription
of young Jewish boys into the Russian military in the last
century for twenty-five-year terms.)

There was also mention of the fact that the United States
government seemed (seems?) less concerned about the pollution
of Indian lands than of other areas.

Thomson noted that child-napping is not technological, and not
really the focus of the panel. We should stick to discussions
of technology, she claimed, and gave the example of Meiji
Japan. Thomson said that they themselves decided they had to
become technological. (This is debatable, at least based on
what I know about the period.)

Skran asked if it was possible for the two levels of
technology to coexist. His answer was that it was possible
only if the technologically advanced society enforces it. They
may want to do it for ethical reasons, or in the interest in
cultural diversity, but they have to actively decide to follow
this sort of a "Prime Directive." (He gave the example of
Michael Armstrong's Agviq, a post-holocaust world in
which native skills are critical.)

Thomson suggested that another reason for preserving the
"native" culture was that the "more advanced" culture might
want the feeling of power it got from controlling the native
people. (All these terms are loaded of course, and in fact the
whole issue of cultural relativism was later raised.)

Skran returned to the question of what would be an ethical way
to manage a relationship with a native people. The panelists
pretty much agreed that it has to be possible for individuals
to leave the native culture. For example, in Mike Resnick's
"Kirinyaga" stories, a dissatisfied member goes to a certain
spot and a certain time, and says the equivalent of "Beam me
up, Scotty," and they're out. In Sheri S. Tepper's
Sideshow, on the other hand, members in one society can
be restrained from leaving, which results in a much less stable
set of societies.

Marcus raised the question of whether a technological culture
is intrinsically expansionist, but this remained unanswered.

Thomson noted in regard to letting the decisions be made by the
native culture, "They will absorb what they want and that may
or may not be good for them but you have to let them make those
decisions."

Balen asked what the difference is between adopting a culture
and having it forced upon it, but this too wasn't dealt with,
although Marcus gave the example of the Marshall Islands
culture being totally destroyed by the United States.

Some people also expressed concern about cultures being
supported as folk cultures instead of as "material" cultures
(by which I assume my note meant real cultures). Skran asked
if there are any currently surviving native cultures that
haven't adopted the material base of the main culture.
Thomson claimed the Navajo fit this description, but other
panelists disagreed, saying the Navajo have adopted the
material culture, and also make most of their money from
tourism, which would not seem to describe a culture viable
outside of the "folk culture" context. Someone in the audience
suggested that the Hopi may be doing a better job of saving
their culture than the Navajo. Everyone did agree that
cultures don't exist in a vacuum in any case. Someone mentioned
the book In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander on
this subject. Marcus asked if a static culture, as people
seemed to be favoring, was in fact a good thing. Skran noted
that a perfectly preserved native culture would of necessity be
one you couldn't leave, and that would be unethical--in
effect, condemning all members born into that culture to
imprisonment within it. Skran also said he agrees with Mander
that genocide is bad, but disagrees with Mander's contention
that technology is bad.

It is true, if one looks at history, that static cultures can
survive a long time; examples would be ancient Egypt and China.
But static cultures have problems when they come up against
another equally powerful or more powerful civilization and may
find it more difficult to adapt. A static culture can easily
become the tree that breaks rather than the tree that bends.

Someone in the audience said that native developments meed to
be valued by the technological culture, and said this wasn't
happening. Someone (Balen?) suggested Tales of a Shaman's
Apprentice by Mark J. Plotkin as an example of this
happening, though others felt that this was not what
Plotkin was doing. The claim they made was that Plotkin was
picking and choosing what he wanted to use from the native
culture rather than taking it as a whole. Skran raised what
seemed like the perfectly obvious objection to this attitude:
if the native culture should be allowed to pick and choose what
it wants from the technological culture, then any culture
should be able to pick and choose what it wants from another
culture.

Thomson pointed out that the panel was starting to talk about
"better" and "worse" instead of looking at how cultures
function from different basic cultural assumptions. True, but
one could also say that antebellum Southern culture had the
basic cultural assumption that slavery was commanded by God.
Does that mean that we cannot apply the term "worse" to that
culture? Or even more paradoxical, if our culture has the
cultural assumption that judging cultures as "better" or "worse"
is valid, by their own rules it would seem as though cultural
relativists cannot criticize us for doing so.

"How influential has Wells been for today's writers? Is he
still someone we can learn from, and if so, what? How readable
is his work now--does it have anything to say to us in a
contemporary sense, or is it becoming a period piece. And how
well does The Time Machine in particular stand up after a
hundred years?"

The audio problems still exist in Hall 3, and while the
panelists fiddled with their microphones, someone noted that
hard science fiction writers are the ones who can find the
switch on the microphone.

The panelists began with the question, "Is The Time
Machine a seminal work for today's writers?"

Baxter said yes--the language was fresh and modern, and
Wells invented the idea of using a mechanical, controllable
method of time travel where previous writers had relied on
magic or wishing. The Time Machine is simultaneously an
adventure, a social parable, and evolutionary parable, and a
parable about science. It can be read by a twelve-year-old, or
analyzed by literary critics.

Stableford agreed, adding that it served as an example of both
a novel and a short story, being the first item in Wells's
Collected Novels and also in Wells's Collected Short
Works.

Silverberg was more ambivalent. He said that Wells was the
best writer who ever wrote science fiction, and that it's been
going downhill ever since 1910. Wells, for example wrote the
first time travel story, the first alien invasion story, and
the first superman story. But The Time Machine is no
longer seminal for a science fiction writer, because it has
been so thoroughly assimilated that it is not necessary to go
back to the source--it is more necessary to see what has
already been done with it. It is, however, seminal for science
fiction readers. As he said, "The ten-year-old Robert
Silverberg found that book in 1945 and was never the same
again."

Sawyer said he first encountered it as the "Classics
Illustrated" comic book and the movie. He finally read the
book, coincidentally enough, in the Science Fiction Hall of
Fame, Volume I, edited by Robert Silverberg. But Sawyer
noted that the novel can be read in a lot of different ways and
suggested the panelists start with it as a work of science
fiction.

Baxter said that one important thing to observe was that The
Time Machine has precisely imagined and described details.
Many of these are in some of the parts taken out of the serial
before book publication. Stableford said that the novel
provided the method for the genre, as well as providing the
basic stories. (The method referred to was that of searching
the environment for nuggets of ideas and then extrapolating
them.) Silverberg reminded us that Wells regarded his science
fiction as apprentice work while preparing to do his real
novels. As Silverberg noted, most of these are not read today,
just as the other novelists of Wells's style such as Henry James
and Joseph Conrad are no longer still popular entertainers, but
Wells as an author of science fiction is.

Sawyer talked about the scene in which the Time Traveller
arrives in a rainstorm in 802,701 C.E. and how Wells was able
to reveal the scene gradually, rather than abruptly giving a
360-degree inventory of what the Time Traveller saw.

The panelists then turned to the Morlock/Eloi dichotomy and
Wells's social commentary. Baxter said that the Time
Traveller tries to interpret what he sees, but he can't be sure
if he's right, and he knows it. Stableford said that although
Wells was a brilliant writer, he was not of the intelligentsia,
but was the son of a servant, and spent a lot of his youth
living underground ("below stairs") in servants' quarters. In
fact, one reason that Wells wanted to write serious novels was
for respectability. Silverberg said that he always found the
Eloi/Morlock story the least interesting, probably because he
aspires to be an Eloi.

In passing, Sawyer noted that the most 1990s thing Wells did
was to leave room for a sequel. (And as Baxter's talk earlier
showed, authors have taken advantage of this.)

It was noted that we still have time travel stories, but not a
lot of alien invasion stories, anti-gravity space ship stories,
or invisible man stories. (Yes, I know there are exceptions.)
Why is this, and is The Time Machine Wells's greatest
novel?

Baxter said that it probably was, although The War of the
Worlds may have been greater when the pastoral English
countryside was more familiar. A twelve-year-old can read
The Time Machine much as he or she would read
Gulliver's Travels--as an adventure story, without
worrying about the underlying meanings. Stableford felt that
The Island of Dr. Moreau might actually be more relevant
today (as well as The First Men in the Moon).

Silverberg partially disagreed, saying The First Men in the
Moon seems merely quaint now, but The Island of
Dr. Moreau is as "alive and quivering" as it was when it was
first published. He also thought that The War of the
Worlds still has relevance and is a perfect novel. In fact,
he intends to write a response to it (whatever that means).
(He also mentioned that Wells also wrote seventy short
stories.) The only one of Wells's seven best-known novels that
Silverberg thinks is antiquarian is The First Men in the
Moon. And of Wells's lesser known works, Silverberg
recommends Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island as well. He
also mentioned the extrapolated technology in The War in the
Air, which Wells wrote after earlier denying the role of the
airplane, and speculates that this turnabout was due in part to
others' writings. Stableford agreed that much of The First Men
in the Moon was dated, but said that what was valuable was
the Selenite society.

I asked, "This may be more a question about the readers
perhaps, but if one of these were unearthed today and hence
eligible for a Hugo, would it get nominated? Would it win?"

In response, Stableford said he wondered if the Verne novel was genuine or
just a clever fake. Sawyer said that Stanley Schmidt (editor
of Analog) said that if Wells had cut the first ten pages
of The Time Machine, Schmidt would have printed it. And
Silverberg noted that the real test is whether an author is
read, and Wells is still read.

Mark Leeper asked about the one novel of the "Big Seven" that
they hadn't mentioned, In the Days of the Comet. Baxter
responded that Wells believed we were in a collective madness,
but the basic implausibility of the novel works against it.
This is also true of The World Set Free and The Shape
of Things to Come.

Stableford thought In the Days of the Comet belongs with
the other books in which Wells was developing his Utopian
dream, saying, "Resentment works better in fictional form."

From the audience, Jack Cohen proposed that the Eloi/Morlock
stuff is boring because Wells, by writing about it, has changed
the world away from a path that would lead to it. The
panelists thought that this was a possibility, though they said
that Wells was a believer in the "Tide of History" rather than
the "Great Man."

Someone asked about what Wells did about time paradoxes and the
answer was that he didn't worry about them, or about the fact
that the Time
Traveller was in two places at one time. Someone else in the
audience objected to Wells's sexual stereotyping and
terrestrial chauvinism (and also to his apparent belief that
there are things that science shouldn't probe), to which
Silverberg replied, "Bless you, I haven't heard a word of PC
since I left California two weeks ago."

This was very well attended, with its full complement and a
waiting list besides. As we were settling in, someone asked if
it didn't bother Turtledove to let the bad guys win in The Guns
of the South, and Turtledove noted that S. M. Stirling did
an even more thorough job of it in his "Draka" series.

Turtledove began by talking about his new book coming out,
The Two Georges, co-authored with Richard Dreyfuss. I asked
him why they didn't use the Gainsborough on the cover, and
Turtledove said that the marketing people thought it more
important to get the names of the authors on the cover.

How did this book come about? Well, apparently Dreyfuss had
been interested in alternate history for a long time and liked
The Guns of
the South, which he read after seeing an article about
Turtledove and the book in the Los Angeles Times. So he
called Turtledove to suggest they have lunch together because
he had this idea for a book and, while Turtledove was
skeptical, he went ahead anyway, and thus the project began.
It was delayed somewhat, since Dreyfuss was also making movies
at the time and couldn't always keep up to the writing pace
Turtledove was used to. Turtledove admitted that the writing
in The
Two Georges was mostly his own, but said that the
characterization and dialogue are heavily Dreyfuss's.

Later I asked him if he had seen the episode of Sliders
with a similar premise about there being no successful American
Revolution, but Turtledove said he had never watched
Sliders (probably a wise move on his part--it's not
that good a show).

Someone mentioned that The Guns of the South didn't seem
to be marketed as science fiction, often showing up in the
mainstream fiction section, and occasionally even in the
history section! The latter is primarily in the South,
supposedly. In connection with this "cross-over" aspect,
Turtledove said that he had received the John Esther Cook Award
for Southern Fiction in 1993 from the Order of the Stars and
Bars, and described attending the awards dinner. Labeling
himself as a conservative, Turtledove said at this event he
felt like a far-left liberal, and wondered what some of the
black waiters felt about the whole affair--but hadn't the
nerve to ask. The Guns of the South has been translated
into Italian, Spanish, and probably Russian at this point, but
not French.

Turtledove got started writing alternate histories with his
"Basil Argyrios" stories. In the first one ("Unholy Trinity,"
a.k.a. "Etos Kosmou 6824" in Agent of Byzantium, 1985),
Basil Argyrios finds the Franks in Spain using gunpowder and
adopts it. The idea behind this series is that Mohammed
became a Christian, and because there was no Muslim threat,
Byzantium never fell, but instead faced a technologically
sophisticated Persia. Asked whether he had any "Salman Rushdie
sorts of problems" with his Basil Argyrios stories, Turtledove
said no, because he is just an infidel, not an apostate.

Someone asked what Turtledove used to do before he quit his day
job; he had been a technical writer for the Los Angeles Board
of Education. Now he is a full-time writer. He writes two and
a half to three hours a day, 350 days a year. (He takes time
out for a few conventions.) The rest of the day is not idle;
it goes toward reading and research for his writing. He is
working on four things now, which is the maximum multi-tasking
he can do. Someone said at this point, "I always worry when a
writer quits his day job," to which Turtledove responded, "So
does the writer." But he forces himself to write every day,
because "if you wait for the Muse to strike, you will starve."
He writes his first drafts by hand, because when he types,
"all the crap comes out." Writing is slower, and forces him to
edit as he writes. Currently he is working on a straight
historical novel about Justinian II.

Someone asked about his books written as "Eric Iverson." When
they were first published, Belmont wanted to use "Eric Iverson"
as the byline, saying no one would buy a book by an author
named "Turtledove." As Turtledove explained, he was a new
author who had just sold his first story and wasn't about to
argue: "The first time you lose any cherry you don't care how.
You worry about quality later." (Well, I'm not sure I'd agree
with that philosophy as being true of everyone.) Later when he
sold a story to Lester Del Rey, Del Rey insisted on using
"Turtledove." So Turtledove was pressured first to use a
pseudonym and then to use his real name.

Currently he is trying to place a collection which will feature
his Hugo-winning story "Down in the Bottomlands." (Why should
it be difficult to place such a collection? Maybe it's a
question of who will pay the most, or market it the best.)

'\"Oct 1984 ANALOG sequel to Road Not Taken
'\".P

Asked about important turning points that still remain to be
done well as alternate histories, Turtle dove suggested that
the Romans conquering Germany and keeping it would qualify.
But he reminded us that the key point in choosing a turning
point or alternate world is to remember that "the interest in
alternate history is the light it sheds on the world we have
now."

Turtledove referred a bit about the problems that occur when
you try to write an alternate history too far in the future of
the change point. I call this the "Via Roma problem" (after
Robert Silverberg's novella). Silverberg avoided the extreme
unlikelihood of there being any sorts of parallels people,
place names, etc., in a world 2000 years after the Exodus
failed and Rome never fell. But the result is that the story
could as easily be set on a different planet; there is little
that ties it to our earth.

Well, we queued for the masquerade outside Hall 5, and got
another taste of the disorganization of Intersection. At 5 PM,
Mark asked at the Information Desk, "Where does one queue for
the masquerade?" "Nobody has told us anything." "Who would
know?" "We suggest entrails of a goat." (And they didn't even
offer to supply the goat. Actually, this reminds me of the
time at work when someone asked in a meeting when some product
would be ready, and someone suggested reading the entrails of a
goat, to which I responded, "But could we then voucher the goat
as a business expense?")

At 5:30 PM, the answer was to start a queue outside Hall 5.
"What if no one queues behind me?" "Make them--that's how
you start a queue." So Mark did this. At 6:15 PM someone came
and moved the entire queue to somewhere else.

This was all to some extent moot, as the doors opened at 6:30
PM, and the hall (which appeared to have a capacity of about
3500) was only two-thirds full for the masquerade. As usual,
there was reserved seating which was at the end opened up to
everyone, meaning people who arrived the earliest did not
necessarily get the best seats.

The Masquerade itself actually started on time!!! There were
only about twenty-five costumes, so we were out before 9 PM.
The costumes were not bad, but there were no Master Class
Awards (I think someone said there were only two Master Class
costumes in the Masquerade). It's a trade-off--the costumes
might not be as amazing as those at a North American Worldcon
(it is hard to transport the costumes transatlantically), but
you don't spend hours and hours seeing bad costumes either, and
you get out at a reasonable time.

Having gotten out at a reasonable time, we decided to hit a few
parties. Well, there were only a few parties, and I
think we got to most of them. Other than bid parties, the
party situation was grim.

The Chicago in 2000 party had the gimmick of science fiction
author trading cards, available for purchase through some
complicated scheme involving pre-supporting memberships. The
Kansas City in 2000 lacked any identifying feature. The
Australia in 1999 had the best party: it had the biggest room,
the most interesting people, a ban on smoking, and Australian
wine. The Moscow in 2017 was (I think) a hoax bid, and had
enough vodka to cause problems with drunken fans in the
hallway. The Zagreb in 1999 had plum brandy, though in
somewhat smaller quantities, and very little chance of winning
even if the bidders are serious. (Rumor has it that the last
Zagreb bid was not entirely serious, but that the bidders were
getting support from the Yugoslav tourist bureau to promote it
at conventions around the world.)

"Can humour help you to put across serious points? If so, why?
Are people just more receptive to the message wrapped up in a
pleasant package?"

I missed the beginning of this; the panel must have started on
time in spite of it being so early.

Willis was saying that comedy and tragedy have the same
material; it's how you deal with it (the treatment) that makes
the difference.

Gunn thought that comedy is a form of avoidance, a way of
avoiding reality.

Resnick said that he has written so much humorous fiction that
his problem is being taken seriously. In his opinion, comedy
is the unexpected happening in an expected place, or vice
versa. Given that simple definition, Resnick asked why only
about half a dozen people can sell humor.

Nye said that humor in general gets no respect, and said to
look at the Academy Awards, where the last comedy to win for
Best Picture was It Happened One Night. (I guess she
doesn't count Annie Hall as a comedy.) Resnick said that
shouldn't be given too much weight; the Academy Awards are
voted on by fewer people than the Hugos.

Willis said that she was on a panel about humor and someone
asked her why no funny story had ever won a Hugo--and this
was right after she had won one for "Even the Queen." (And
there are lots of others. The point is that no one seems to
remember them.)

Nye also felt that displaced cultures have the deepest humor to
compensate for feeling out of place. Resnick agreed, saying
that writing comedy is an outlet for pain and gave the example
of George Alec Effinger who would write his serious work when
he was feeling good, but when he was in pain he could write
only comedy. Willis said she had read somewhere that after
being taken to Bergen-Belsen, Anne Frank had only happy dreams.
Willis also said that Hitchcock understood laughter as the
release of tension to a way filmmakers since seem to have
forgotten.

Resnick said that returning from ConAdian on his
Winnepeg-Minneapolis flight, there were a lot of professional
authors, editors, etc., and the conversation turned to, "If the
plane crashes, who will be on the front page of Locus?"

Willis said that she thought that writers who dabble in comedy
fall through into an alternate world and funny things happen to
them, and related a humorous travel of trying to get to Kyrie
Muir from Glamis. I'm not sure i agree--equally strange
things happen to Pete Rubinstein ... or to us. As someone in
the audience said later, "It's the presentation. You made us
laugh, but if we told the same stories, people wouldn't laugh."

Willis told how one year she bought a full-size cardboard
mock-up of Harrison Ford, thinking she could carry it on the
plane, and then won a Hugo which she also had
to carry on. "I owe all my success to Harrison Ford," she
said. Resnick said he won a Hugo the year they were clear
acrylic and when they questioned what it was at airport
security, he said, "This is a rectal thermometer for an
elephant." In all of these stories, Willis said, it was
important to be able to laugh at yourself.

Someone quoted Asimov as once saying that humor is a bull's-eye
with no target around it--you're either funny or you're not.
Gunn said that was what was nice about writing humorous
stories: in a story, you have many chances to be funny; it's
not just one shot.

Willis noted that there are many types of humor: topical,
visual, language, and general humor. She also said that humor
builds. Some people will laugh at some parts of a scene,
others at different ones, but everyone laughs at the end
because they've been built up to it. Gunn asked if Willis
actually thought about this when she was writing, and Willis
instantly replied, "Yes, I do." Gunn said, "I don't think
about it" at the time but she hones it later.

Gunn talked about telling or hearing a story about Nixon in
which the audience laughed at the jokes because they were
structured like jokes (or in scientific terms, they were
joke-like objects) even if they were too young to remember
Nixon.

Resnick said that once "someone asked me to record She
with Ursula LeGuin," which led to great amusement until he
corrected himself to say "Ursula Andress." But the point was
that his reaction to the film was, "If they could be that funny
by accident, what could they do if they tried?" And apparently
this led to his creation of Lucifer Jones.

Resnick emphasized that the writer must be conscious of the
audience or you could tell tales to yourself in the shower and
save wear and tear on your fingertips.

What humorists do the panelists like? Willis like Goulart:
"Humor does date, but his holds up well." Resnick said that
Thorne Smith used to be very funny, but his Prohibition/drunk
jokes aren't funny now, especially with our concern over
alcoholism. Gunn said, "I think it's the tropes of humor that
age." She like Robert Benchley and Finley Peter Dunn (who
wrote in Irish dialect at turn of the century). As an example
of Dunn, she quoted him as having said, "If the American people
can govern themselves, they can govern anything that walks." (This
was apparently in regard to the Philippines.)

(Mention of the turn of the century led Willis to say, "I don't
see how we can possibly cope with the turn of the century
because we have nothing to call it." Personally, I like "The
Naughts.")

One problem humorists have now is what Willis called the battle
cry of every group: "That's not funny." (Of course, 90% of the
time it's not funny. It's only when someone with the talent of
a Willis or a Resnick writes about it that it's funny. And
denigrative humor that isn't funny is worse than other types of
non-funny humor, in that it makes the "humorist" look
bigoted.)

Gunn gave her example of telling ethnic humor: "How many Polish
popes does it take to unscrew a pregnant woman?" She had this
printed in the college newspaper and someone complained. (What
a surprise.) Resnick added, "The Polish pope performed his
first miracle: he made a blind man lame."

Resnick closed by saying that humor was an essential element,
even in a serious work, and that one can't carry a serious
scene more than 1700 words without relieving some tension with
humor.

Mullan brought a lot of books which she stacked up as examples
of popular science books. Some were mentioned during the talk,
but as best as I could tell, the stack included:

The Collapse of Chaos by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart

What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard
Feynman

Chaos by James Gleick

Eight Little Piggies by Stephen Jay Gould

The Tangled Wing by Melvin Konner

Fuzzy Logic by Dan McNeill

The Descent of the Child by Elaine Morgan

Mind Tools by Rudy Rucker

The Density of Life by Edward O. Wilson

Brewster began by saying that he reads popular science for the
sense of wonder it gives him rather, and finds it better in
this regard than most science fiction. He specifically
mentioned Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained.
(Dennett has also written The Mind's Eye with Douglas
Hofstadter.) Mullan asked if Dennett actually intended to
induce a sense of wonder, but I'm not sure that's a fair
question in judging the reader's reaction.

Mullan said she reads popular science as a way to keep up with
science without reading dense material that one may not have
time for. Marcus said that this could be dangerous, and
holding up Gleick's Chaos, said, "This book detracts
from the sum of human knowledge." Why? Because it has spawned
a non-rigorous treatment of the subject in the media, resulting
in what Marcus termed a "chain of distorted reflections."

Mullan noted that at least science fiction says it's fiction,
while the non-fiction treatments masquerade as truth. From the
audience, Anita Cole asked, "What book on chaos theory would
you recommend?" Marcus suggested Order and Chaos by
Boullet and two others whose names I didn't get (and I couldn't find
any reference to this in Books in Print), and then added
Stephen H. Kellert's In the Wake of Chaos, which starts out,
"Chaos theory is
not as interesting as it sounds. How could it be?"

Carmichael recommended Science or Nature magazines,
and also The New Scientist.

Someone in the audience asked why there are so many popular
science books now. Catherine Kerrigan, also in the audience
said it was due in large part to the success of Stephen
Hawking's book, and to various political attempts (at least in
the United Kingdom) to promote science.

Carmichael says that one way to keep up is to look for review
articles of the books in journals, since they often
summarize the book. Marcus said that the review articles cover
the information, but don't entertain the way the books can.
Mullan added that the problem was also to know which reviews to
read; Marcus said the trick was to read the reviews in the
specialized journals.

Carmichael also suggested just picking up the book and reading
a page at random to see if it is what you're looking for.

From the audience, Kerrigan reminded the panelists that popular
science is written for people who are not trained scientists,
not for the panelists, most of whom were trained
scientists.

Asked for specific recommendations, Marcus said James Trefil is
a good popular science writer. Mullan said that although
Jered M. Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution &
Future of the Human Animal,
which purported to be an examination of the
evolutionary history of mankind, was well-received, it never
showed a link between the evolutionary theory and the current
state of mankind. Brewster compared it to The Bell Curve
in that it shows that what is needed is a popular science book
on statistics, correlation vs. causality, false positives and
negatives, and so on. (Someone in the audience suggested that
John Allen Paulos's Innumeracy fit this description.)

Someone in the audience suggested that there are two types of
pop sci books: one by the popular science writer who is trying
to inform, and one by scientists pursuing their own agenda and
trying to make a name for themselves. Brewster agreed, but
said the latter was not necessarily an absolute obstacle. For
example, Roger Penrose's Emperor's New Mind was a
splendid book in spite of being wrong, but then again, Penrose
made clear it was his own agenda. Carmichael said she actually
prefers when the author does have an opinion (e.g., Paul
Davies). Mullan gave the example of Fuzzy Logic, which
has a political agenda vis-a-vis why the Japanese have used it

Someone in the audience complained that we concentrate on the
glamorous stuff and forget to teach the basics.

I asked for the panelists' opinions of Asimov as a popular
science writer. Carmichael said it would be difficult for many
of the panelists to answer, since Asimov's science writing was
(and is) not generally available in the United Kingdom.

Marcus summed up the panel by asking, "What good does good
science writing do?" and then answering, "It inspires young
people to go into science."

"Is contemporary SF/F relevant to the 'pre-industrialized'
world, and vice versa? Can the Third World be portrayed by
First World writers without being exploited? Why do so few
writers include the Third World in their work--lack of
knowledge of the subject, a perceived unattractiveness of the
subject, or is the low-tech subject simply at odds with a
high-tech genre?"

Aldiss started by asking who invented the term "Third World"?
Was it Tito or Nehru? No one really answered this, and that's
because it was neither; it was G. Balandier in 1956, who said,
"La conference tenue a Bandoeng en avril 1955, par les
delegues de vingt-neuf nations asiatiques et africaines ...
manifeste l'acces, au premier plan de la scene
politique internationale, de ces peuples qui constituent
un "Tiers Monde" entre les deux 'blocs,' selon
l'expression d'A. Sauvy." (This according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, which has other references if you
want to look it up. I will not type them in from that
teeny-tiny type! Neither will I attempt to get all the accent
marks correct, since I could barely see the letters!)

In any case, Aldiss pointed out the term was misleading,
since it implied some
commonality to the Third World, which is actually much more
"miscellaneous" and diverse than the First or Second Worlds.
Aldiss also observed, "Life may be pretty tough in the Third
World, but the people there appear to be, if not more happy,
then at least more tranquil than we are in the West." He
attributes this to the caste system in India, for example.
There is no struggle to improve.

Olsa agreed, and said Singapore is successful precisely because
it is not a democracy. (This led to a fixation on Singapore
that ran through the whole hour and seemed to replace any
discussion of the Third World in science fiction.)

Jones said there is a decline in the use of the term "Third
World," and that it is being replaced by the term "the
developing world."

McDonald said that by any workable definition, Belfast is part
of the Third World, with its politics, violence, unemployment,
etc. Just as streets in Los Angeles are showing "signs of
spontaneous malling" in the words of some commentator, other
areas show "signs of spontaneous Third World-ing." The
division of the planet into First, Second, and Third Worlds is
not a simple map; it's more of a fractal pattern. But McDonald
agreed with part of what Aldiss said, saying that the lives
of the have-nots seem to be richer and more energetic than
those of the haves. (Aldiss noted here that this is true of
people "outside the system" in general; science fiction
conventions are more vibrant than anything Iris Murdoch ever
goes to.)

Aldiss returned (metaphorically) to Singapore, saying it is a
city of the future, and that we mustn't sentimentalize about
some of these places. "These places ruled by dictators with
rods of iron can be good places to live." Olsa reported that
in Singapore, chewing gum is produced and sold by the
underground like drugs (so prohibiting things doesn't
necessarily work). Lundwall describes Singapore as a trade-off
of giving up freedom for security. (Benjamin Franklin's ghost
hovered over me, whispering, "They that can give up essential
liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither
liberty nor safety." I suggested he talk to the panel, but he
wasn't listening.)

Jones said that the Third World can show First World
characteristics; Elizabeth Hand writes about Indonesia as the
last great imperialist nation. And the panelists agreed that
such changes as the Internet may have a major effect: it is
hard to enter the Internet without giving up the control of
information that such societies seem to require.

Someone on the panel suggested that Singapore was an attempt
to apply Western concepts in a Third World context.

The panelists were asked where Third World countries are going.
Jones said she was not qualified to predict. McDonald said
that the question was from a First World perspective, just as
Singapore is a First World fantasy city.

From the audience, Chris Higgins asked if the First World needs
a Third World. McDonald hinted that to some extent he would be
addressing this in his upcoming book about aliens giving the
Third World alien nanotech.

Someone in the audience asked why there were no panelists from
the Third World. Olsa said that while the First World's
science fiction had reached the Third World--he had just
seen a Batman T-shirt in Kigali (Rwanda)--science fiction
requires a middle-class that thinks about the future. McDonald
expressed it differently: "Science fiction is the mythology of
developed nations."

David Zink noted that the First, Second, and Third Worlds are
not permanent arrangements; China and Egypt used to be the
First World. This led John Sloan to ask about the results in
China of a whole generation of "only children," most of whom
are male. Will this lead to an increased level of violence?
Or will there just be, as someone suggested, a rise in
mail-order brides? One of the panelists suggested that there
was a similar imbalance in Europe after World War I.

Jones actually returned to the topic to ask how science fiction
treats the Third World, and to answer by saying, "We talk about
them as if they don't exist." She noted that when Arthur
C. Clarke wrote Childhood's End, his description of the
race problem in South Africa focused on the "persecuted
whites."

I was disappointed that the panelists didn't talk more about
writing science fiction set in the Third World, since that what
I particularly like about McDonald's and Jones's writing. The hour
was very disconnected in that when someone asked a
question, one panelist would answer it, then go back to the
audience without letting the others answer it.

After this, we went to lunch with Kate and Barbara at
Molinare's, the restaurant upstairs at the SECC. It was priced
about the same as restaurants in town, and I was getting tired
of fast food and wanted to sit down.

[Thanks to Mark for taking notes, especially since I asked him
at the last minute after my tape recorder wouldn't work.]

I started by asking everyone in the audience to turn off their
cellular phones and alarm watches--as i said earlier, some
guy had a phone that kept ringing during panels.

I started by asking the panelists to comment on the dichotomy
between the Great Man-Capitalism-Free Will-Aristocracy Theory
and the Tide of History-Marxism-Determinism-Democracy Theory.
Most said that they generally believed in the Tide of History,
though there was room for the effects of individuals as well.
Flynn pointed out that as long as authors are stuck making
stories out of history, they will probably use the Great Man
Theory even if they don't completely agree with it.

Newman expressed his feelings by saying that aside from
agreeing with Turtledove on the Great Man versus the Tide of
History, every now and then there is a fulcrum where history
will be radically altered. For example, if someone else had
been President he would have handled Reconstruction better than
Andrew Johnson
did. When we talk about changing history, what do we really
mean about that? Maybe if things had gone differently, we
would be living in Cabotland but things would still be similar.

Leeper said that she was reminded of a line from Tom Stoppard's
play Travesties, in which a character expressed Marx's
belief in the Tide of History by quoting Marx as saying, "I
believe if Lenin had not existed, it would not have been
necessary to invent him."

The panel talked a bit about history itself as a character,
Leeper mentioned that Kim Stanley Robinson has done that, with
such stories as "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions"
(about the bombing of Hiroshima), "Remaking History" (about
faking the Viking discovery of America), and "A History of the
Twentieth Century (with Pictures)" (about how to look at
history).

Leeper asked the panelists, "What makes alternate history
believable, what makes it good, and are they the same?"

Turtledove said that alternate history doesn't have to be
believable to be good; there can be a "gonzo" story that was
still good. In any case, we do not write about alternate
worlds, we write about our world, and alternate history gives
us a different mirror. Turtledove said his story "The Last
Article" was set in a post-World War II in which Germany was
victorious. Set in India, it looked at a situation in which
Gandhi's civil disobedience was likely to fail. It is looking
more at the limits of civil disobedience that the specific
alternate history.

Leeper asked Ritter if he as an historian saw things
differently. Ritter replied that utopias and dystopias also
show the world in distorted ways. Historical fiction is bound
to some worlds, but you can throw in all sorts of silly things
as well. (Leeper joked that nobody would throw in alien
invaders, though.)

Flynn said you can't write alternate history unless you are
holding up some sort of mirror. World War II is popular as a
base because our parents and grandparents lived through it.

Flynn added that it is possible to write alternate history with
no science fiction content. Turtledove responded, "There is
a 'but' to that." Even though you are not talking about science,
there is still the theory that every decision "splits" the
universe. Flynn suggested that E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime
was an example of an alternate history that did nothing with
science. Ritter disagreed, saying, "I think history is a
science," and Flynn said that in the 1950's the big hip science
was geography.

Newman agreed that not all alternate history was science
fiction. For example, his Anno Dracula, having a vampire
marry Queen Victoria, would not be science fiction--it would
be fantasy.

Leeper mentioned one problem with making alternate histories
believable is that if a story takes into account how much things
would change, it will be completely unfamiliar. For example,
Robert Silverberg's "Via Roma" takes place about our century
after a change back more than 2000 years ago. There is no
similarity to our world. "He did a good job of realizing
everything would be very different, but it was so different I did
not like it," bemoaned Leeper.

Newman said that he found the most irritating alternate history
is that Rome did not fall, and everything is the same centuries
later. Flynn said that is a stasis society. Leeper noted
there was one like that in which Jesus wasn't crucified, but
Turtledove noted in the specific three-book series they were
all talking about,
there were two changes: Rome defeated Arminius in the Teutoburg
Wald, and twenty years later Jesus was not crucified. (Well,
actually he was not crucified any of the other years either.) To
be fair, the author did connect these two changes, but he
assumed that after this, nothing would change for centuries.

Flynn pointed out that if you start making changes, all sorts of
people would not be born; even if their parents did meet they
would have a different child. Turtledove said that sometimes
he would have an historical personage existing where he
shouldn't, but he knows he's cheating. Flynn said while the
child might be different, the parents could well give him the
same name. Leeper mentioned Howard Waldrop's "Ike at the
Mike," which does things entirely differently but is not an
alternate history in the classic sense. What makes things
really unbelievable is, for example, if six people come along
and destroy Rome. Turtledove mentioned that something like
that occurs in Poul Anderson's High Crusade, but even
that is more believable, and oddly enough, in the end does
touch on alternate history.

In any case, things have effects. If you change history, none
of the same people born. If World War II doesn't happen, but
you have John Kennedy become President anyway, you had better
explain how. Ritter said he thought all the Kennedy brothers
were fascinating, and any of them could have been President.

Ritter also said that although changes in World War II are a
very popular subject for alternate histories, there are no more
than five German works about such changes. Leeper asked if
this was due to any restrictions in Germany on what can be
published about the Nazis; for example, can someone write an
alternate history in which Nazi Germany wins? Ritter said yes;
there was one such book, and it was banned, and there was such
an uproar that it was allowed. There were problems with Norman
Spinrad's Iron Dream in that the original cover had a
swastika, which is banned, but when that was removed, the
book was published with no problem.

Turtledove commented that given all the material about World
War II, he was surprised there weren't more such stories in
Germany. Flynn noted the same phenomenon in the United States;
we don't write alternate histories about wars we lost. Leeper
said that she believed one reason was that the most famous such
war, the Vietnam War, was too recent and too many people find
it too painful (she knew someone who wouldn't go to see Miss
Saigon because he found the reminders too painful), With
World War II, while veterans are still alive, it was long
enough ago to dull the bad memories, and after all, the United
States did win. As far as the Korean War goes, no one
remembers it and alternate histories about it would be met by
puzzled looks by most readers. Also, Flynn said with the
Korean War you would have to have one side or the other win,
instead of a stalemate. And the War of 1812 is another one no
one remembers which, if the United States didn't lose, they at
least didn't win: having your capital burned doesn't really
constitute a victory. (And the best known battle of the war,
which the United States did win, was fought after the war
was over.)

Turtledove said that part of what makes a change point good is
not only that they are relevant, but that there is a story that
the author can write as well. Flynn agreed, saying that is
interesting to think of a Europe with five more geniuses like
Freud, but then you have to write that. Newman said it's even
more difficult if you choose to try to write about something
happening that didn't happen in our world. Leeper said this
tied in with Ritter's comments Saturday on cliometrics, and
asked him to repeat them. Basically, Ritter said, you can only
subtract out data, you cannot add it, so cliometricians say the
only thing that is interesting is subtracting. Newman said all
this implies the use of numbers, but thought this could be done
without.

Newman suggested that an important factor, for example, was the
proportion of people traveling; this will determine how fast an
idea spreads. For example, adding a bunch of soldiers moving
around will result in a ferment of ideas, not a static society.

Leeper agreed with Turtledove that the problem was in making
the change interesting, and that to some extent requires not
treading the same ground as everyone else. She asked what
change points have not been overused that panelists think would
be promising.

Turtledove suggested that having the Romans win at Teutoburg Wald and
then romanize Germany seemed like a critical change point to him.
(Although this was done, albeit badly, in the series mentioned
earlier.) Ritter suggested that if in the 1845 vote about making
Austria part of Germany. the Austrians had not voted against their own
proposal, but instead had voted to join Germany, that would have
greatly changed European politics.

Flynn said his mind toward trivia: what if Fatty Arbuckle did
not go to that party? Who would have had better careers?
Flynn suggested Louise Brooks. He said that Mae West wouldn't
have made it, since she relied on being just on the edge of the
Hayes Code.

Newman said he tried to come up with something off the wall,
and while everybody does World War II, the American
Revolutionary War doesn't get much play, and World War I is
almost forgotten. He suggested von Gluck's turn not happening,
or the Second Dynasty in Egypt not breaking down. What if
Pharaohs had not able to unify, and the Nubian Kingdom had
started a thousand years earlier? (The only (von) Gluck I
can find is the composer who had a great effect on opera,
but from context, I would have thought von Gluck was a military
figure.)

Leeper said an alternate history she would like to see would be
what Christianity would have been like without St. Paul. As
she expressed it, "What if more followed what Jesus said,
instead of Paul's interpretation of it?" (One she didn't have
a chance to mention was what if the British had known that
Jiddah, the leading force for partition of India, had
tuberculosis and would die soon. One speculation is that they
might have delayed the decision until he was dead, and people
would have decided to keep India together instead of splitting
into India and Pakistan. See page 109-111 of Larry Collins
and Dominque Lapierre's Freedom at Midnight--or at
least those are the page numbers in my edition.)

Someone in the audience, responding to an earlier comment, said
that it used to be true that for ideas to travel, people had to
travel, but now was that still true? Leeper suggested that
modern communications could be looked on as "out-of-body"
travel.

Someone asked whether the break-up of the Soviet empire would
inspire more alternate histories. Turtledove said that this
may be what's inspiring all the stories of Hitler winning, and
then seventy-five years after the war Fascism starting to break
up. Flynn said that the end of the Cold War will cause some,
and old spy stories will come up as well. (Leeper mentioned
Norman Spinrad's Russian Spring as an "instant" alternate
history: near-future science fiction when he wrote it, but by the
time it was published it was alternate history.)

Leeper asked for last thoughts. Newman said he thought of
another example of projecting different past from what didn't
happen but could have: using Hiero's steam engine as a Roman
catapult. Flynn said that because alternate history which has
grown out of science fiction, it tends to dwell on technology; he
would like to look at political fields or religion, Leeper
agreed, saying that she likes to read alternate histories that
look at social change, and particularly at religion. History
is after all trying to change the future the way we want it,
which is the whole idea of Flynn's In the Country of the
Blind.

Ritter thought that it used to take longer to write an
effective alternate history in the sense of waiting until after
a given event. Where before it took a generation to assimilate
and collect the information about something, now information
flows so fast that it may take only five or ten years. This
led Flynn to ask about real people suing writers for portraying
them in alternate histories; Ritter responded that Hermann
Goering filed a lawsuit against a writer for doing this.

Turtledove summed up a lot of people's feeling when he said, "A
friend once described alternate history as the most fun you
have with your clothes on."

There were also the Seiun Awards for works in translation:
novel for Hyperion by Dan Simmons, and short story for "A
Planet Named Shayol" by Cordwainer Smith.

The ceremonies began with Robert Silverberg giving a moving
eulogy for John Brunner, at the end of which he asked, not for
a moment of silence, but for a standing ovation for Brunner.
After this, Duane's and Morwood's opening humor fell somewhat
flat, though I'm not convinced it wouldn't have done so anyway.
(Or maybe it's just not to my taste.)

The awards went without a hitch. Langford's two wins were
predictable, Interzone's somewhat less so, but that was
one I was pleased to see. I think Interzone is doing
some of the best and most interesting fiction around, but it
doesn't stand much chance at a North American Worldcon, with
only 250 North American subscribers. Best Nonfiction was
another predictable one.

(Langford's win were so predictable that I didn't bother to
bring my tuxedo. I had no desire to cart it all over Britain
for a month when I wasn't even going to be on stage. I did
bring a dressy jacket and bow tie however.)

The business meeting earlier voted to eliminate the Best
Professional Artwork category; this needs to be ratified by
L.A.Con III next year before it actually happens.

It was nice to see yet another artist win the Best Professional
Artist Hugo; now if only the Best Professional Editor Hugo
would start moving around to some of the other deserving
candidates. Dozois is very good, but I don't think he's the
best every year.

The less said about Best Dramatic Presentation the better. I
voted all the candidates other than Interview with the
Vampire below "No Award."

Mike Resnick was the first person to be nominated for four
Hugos in a single year, but missed being the first person to
lose four Hugos in a single night. He is now tied with
Ursula K. LeGuin, who also lost three Hugos, and Connie Willis,
who lost three Hugos in 1992. (If there's some
earlier "big-time loser," I'm sure someone will tell me.)

Michael Bishop has now had ten Hugo nominations without a win,
the current record. However, he still has a ways to go to beat
Robert Silverberg, who had a string of sixteen nominations
without a win (although Silverberg had won a Hugo previous to
the string).

The only major problem from the point of view of the
participants was that they didn't give us any directions: which
side of the stage the winner should walk up, how they should
exit the stage, and so on.

The Hugo ceremonies were over by 10 PM. For a change they
asked all the nominees to gather on the stage for photographs
before having photographs of just the winners. (I suspect the
low percentage of nominees attending made this possible; one
could normally expect about sixty nominees, but there were
probably only about half that there.) That they wanted
everyone there was also not announced beforehand.

Okay, it's officially called the "Hugo Nominees Party," but all
the nominees call it the "Hugo Losers Party." I suppose one
should not look a gift horse in the mouth, but this is the
first HLP in six years that had a cash bar. Yes, I know things
are done differently in Britain, but to throw a party with the
nominees as your guests and then to ask them to pay for their
drinks (including soft drinks) seems, well, just a bit tacky.
The nominee souvenirs were travel flashlights (oops, this is
Britain, so they were torches).

It was claimed that we would be able to see the fireworks from
the HLP, and this was true if you were willing to sit on the
floor directly under the window and practically under the
buffet table. Someone had failed to take into account the
awning, which blocked most of the view.

There was some food (for which we did not have to pay), but it
was pretty heavy for that late: chicken drumettes, samosa, and
donner kebab. For vegetarians or anyone avoiding fat, there
was nothing. Maybe I'm out of step with what everyone else
wants, but fruit, crackers (biscuits here), cheese, and raw
vegetables are much more appealing to me.

We left about 11 PM, when it got too crowded to move around at
all. Going towards the taxi rank, we saw two women standing to
one side and discovered they were waiting for the city bus
which ran from the SECC to the Marriott for 30p (a lot cheaper
than the #1 convention shuttle). So we waited with them and
took that. Why didn't the committee tell us about this city
bus?

"A short story is not just a cut-down novel. So what is it
that makes it work, and what is the difference between writing
a short story and a novel? How much can you pack into a short
story before it isn't really a short story anymore--is
a 'short story' really defined by a word count or by other
characteristics? And which is the more natural length for
SF--if Fantasy is naturally the blockbuster trilogy, is SF
naturally the short story?"

Speller claimed that Terry Bisson once said that what makes a
good short story is that it subverts all the rules of a good
short story. Bisson said this was what he called a
retro-story: "A wild idea dressed up just enough to get it out
on stage and let it clank around a little bit." But he warned
it can be done only occasionally. Soukup said that her story
"The Story So Far" fit this description, being told from the
point of view of a minor character with only a few scenes in
someone else's story (something like Rosenkrantz and
Guilderstern Are Dead, but without scenes interpolated
between the "real" scenes). The story, Soukup said, was
workshopped and everyone (except Vonda McIntyre) told her she
needed to change it completely. She didn't, and it was
nominated for a Hugo.

For a look at what a good short story is, Bisson recommended
the Dozois anthologies. He said now it's pretty much a given
that science fiction stories have dialogue, characterization,
etc.--all the things that used to be missing. (Someone said
that whenever they hear someone talk about wooden dialogue,
they think of Pinocchio.)

Watson said one difference between short stories and novels was
that "with short stories, I just start them. With novels you
need a little more planning." Bisson said another way of
expressing this was, "A short story you can hold all in RAM at
one time." You can always see the "big picture." It exists
all at one time.

Bisson also said that a short story doesn't have an arc like a
novel; it's like more two photographic plates that have a shift
between them. Speller said that a short story is much more
compressed, like a snapshot, encapsulating just a single
moment. Soukup continued this analogy, saying "A novel is a
whole series of photographs of a city." Bisson claimed a short
story is like sex and a novel is like a love affair.

(There was a long aside here about some analogy with
photographing naked men. I'm not relating it because I want
people to realize that they don't get everything from my
con reports.)

Watson said that one advantage short stories have is that it is
easier to deal with obsessional or uncomfortable material in a
short story than in a long novel, both for the writer and the
reader. Watson also declaimed, "It is necessary for short
story writers to be physically short." He noted that (the very
tall) Geoff Ryman has not done short stories, and "look at
Ellison." (Ryman has written novellas, which many would
include under the rubric "short fiction.")

Speller said that the attitude she hears that short stories are
just training for novel-writing bothers her. (Karen Joy
Fowler, in the introduction to her short story collection
Artificial Things, said she was repeatedly asked, "When
are you writing a novel?") Bisson said that it worked in
reverse for him: he started with novels, then switched to short
stories. (For that matter, so did Mike Resnick.)

Bisson, speaking about the dearth of short stories outside of
the science fiction field, said "There are very few Ray Carvers
in America making a living writing short stories." Soukup
mentioned that she had just sold a short story collection to
Dreamhaven. Someone in the audience pointed out that in the
1930s there was more market for short stories in magazines, but
few markets for novels, and that now the situation was
reversed.

Watson said that the problem with writing a novel is that
people say, "I haven't seen a story from you for a long time;
are you dead?" However, he also added that you can fix a story
after it's published before it's reprinted, but with a novel,
you're stuck. Bisson responded, "That's cheating," leading to
a discussion of whether the text is the author's or the
readers' after it is printed? Bisson noted that authors used
to change their text all the time, but that has been phased
out.

An audience member asked what freedoms short stories give an
author. Watson said he had no real answer, but later noted
that in general books have to give you a sense of believability
that isn't as necessary in short stories. Soukup said they let
you go after a tone, a certain emotional and philosophical
feeling at the end. In that sense, she said, they were
narrowcast rather than broadcast (although those terms usually
apply to the audience, not what is being transmitted). Watson
said a short story is black-and-white, a novel is Technicolor.

Bisson said he likes to write short shorts that are all
dialogue (the one I thought of was his Hugo-nominated "Press
Ann") or that use other tricks, but editors don't usually buy
them. Sometimes short stories can grow; Fire on the
Mountain started as a short story. But Watson and Bisson
agreed that, in general, expanding a short story to a novel
doesn't work, even though (as Bisson said) many novels we see
today are really short stories swelled up.

The panelists agreed that using standard conventions (e.g.,
faster-than-light travel) helps do shorter pieces, because you
don't need to explain everything. Speller thought this was
allowed, but said she hates the re-use of historical
characters, to which Soukup replied, "Sometime Mike Resnick
twists our arms." Bisson said the problem was that a few
people did it and it turned out to be fun, but then people got
carried away.

The panelists also mentioned "fix-up" novels of connected short
stories, such as A. E. Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space
Beagle and Edgar Pangborn's Davy, but Bisson observed
that these are out of fashion now. (I expect we'll see one for
Mike Resnick's "Kirinyaga" stories, and Harry Turtledove's
Agent of Byzantium was a "fix-up" novel.)

After this I hung out in the Green Room for a while. Connie
Willis came in, totally exhausted from lack of sleep, but when
programming asked her if she could fill in on a two-person
panel which was short one person, she immediately agreed,
without even asking what the topic was. (Later, the other
person on the panel must have withdrawn as well, because I saw
it was canceled.) A bunch of us discussed having a convention
at the Mall of America--Mallcon, obviously--with Somtow
Sucharitkul and Barry Longyear as Guests of Honor. Several
female fans and pros (whose names I will conceal for their own
protection) petitioned the ribbons committee of L.A.Con III to
have "Studmuffin" ribbons. (I asked how one got one of this
year's "Lady from Hell" ribbons, but apparently one requirement
was that you had to be a mother.)

I also managed to get on the computers in the fan area and
check my email: 2102 messages in 3.3 Megabytes so far!

"Do reviews have a function? If so, what is it? Why are
SF/fantasy reviews primarily confined to the semi-prozine and
amateur press? Surely if SF readers wanted reviews there would
be more of them available in the mass market? How does
reviewing differ from criticism--is it for instance
fundamental that a review is directed at the general readership
to support selection, whilst criticism is directed at an
audience of experts? What makes a good review--or a good
reviewer? And do we get the reviews we deserve?"

It sounded really great, but like so many other Monday
afternoon panels, was canceled at the last minute (even after
the day's schedule had come out). I don't know if panelists
changed their plans and left earlier than they had said, or if
the schedule failed to take the panelists' travel plans into
account, but this seemed to be common.

What follows is Mark's report on a panel I should have
gone to, but the description sounded as though it would be more
about Conan Doyle's forays into criminology in his own life
than about Sherlock Holmes:

This was an excellent idea for a panel. It brought together an
expert on the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle and a police
forensics expert. The panelists included moderator Duncan
Lunan, Owen Dudley Edwards (a professor at Edinburgh University
and a great enthusiast for the writings of Doyle), and David
Hall (a local forensics expert for the Strathclyde Police
Department). Hall explained that he is not a policeman and
does not wear a police uniform; he wears a lab coat.

Lunan began by suggesting that Holmes did have a place at a
science fiction convention. We think of the Holmes stories as
detective stories, but the detective story was not fully formed
at the time they were written and neither was forensic science.
Doyle was suggesting that the limits of forensic science could
be much extended. In fact, that was a true statement. Lunan
thinks that the Holmes stories were science fiction when they
were written.

Edwards said that the real-life precursor of Holmes was not so
much Dr. Joseph Bell, but another professor from Edinburgh
earlier in the century, Professor Christianson. The incident
in A Study in Scarlet in which Holmes is supposed to have
beaten a corpse to determine to what extent bruises can be
induced after death was based on fact. It goes back to the
notorious case of Burke and Hare. Apparently on one of the
bodies the notorious pair provided there were bruises on the
body and the pair claimed they were induced putting the corpse
into a barrel. Christianson doubted that bruises could be
induced after death and decided to find out.

Hall talked a bit about how forensics has changed. Of course,
in the time of Holmes there was no such thing, but certainly it
is no longer just one person examining a crime scene; it is a
team of experts with various specialties. Hall himself was a
chemist and a forensic scientist; someone else might be an
expert in examining with laser light and ultra-violet light.

Edwards mentioned another difference was the willingness to
experiment on oneself. He read off an example from A Study
in Scarlet where Holmes was using his own blood in an
experiment. In "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" he applies
a hallucinogenic
to himself and to Watson, just the sort of thing that Watson
was warned against in A Study in Scarlet. It was not
that Holmes was malicious or even unconcerned for Watson's
welfare but that Holmes is shown as a consummate scientific
enthusiast. And in this period many scientists did experiment
on themselves. Edwards said that this, and not Deacon Brodie,
was the inspiration for
"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." (Deacon Brodie,
a notorious figure in Edinburgh
history, was a pious church deacon by day and a dangerous
criminal by night.)

Hall added that any forensic scientist who experimented on
himself would be sacked on the spot. Holmes at one part is
elated to find a chemical test that proves something is blood.
Things are much more advanced. Today they would be able to
prove not just if a sample is blood, or if it is human blood;
today they could probably tell is a sample found was blood
from on particular person or not. And in fact, they may not
even need the person himself to make that judgement, but can
determine it if they can get blood from near family members.

The conversation turned to Doyle's style. Edwards said that
Doyle knew he was following on from the style of Poe. He said
that not only do the Holmes stories tend to have the same
structure repeatedly, but it is the structure of a medical
investigation. The client comes to Holmes with a problem,
Holmes collects data, Holmes builds a theory, he tests it, he
may be right or wrong, and then the case is solved. That
structure is based on how medical students do inference. The
Holmes stories are derived from teachers at medical schools and
how medical students are trained to look at problems.

At this point Lunan asked if the conversation could also bring
in Professor Challenger. He felt that while the subject matter
of the Challenger stories was different, there are certain
parallels and that Malone was a sounding board a lot like
Watson, Challenger was a lot like Holmes. In addition, the
Challenger stories were science fiction by any measure.

Edwards said that certainly there was a common theme running
through Doyle of the Scientific Mind at war with lesser minds.
For him a major moment in The Lost World is when
Summerlee admits to Challenger that he has been wrong about the
presence of dinosaurs on the plateau. Even with this theme the
Doyle stories were not all resolved on a rational basis.
Edwards read a piece from Doyle's first science fiction story,
"The Silver Hatchet," in which the real villain is not a human
but it is the cursed hatchet at fault.

Lunan pointed out that on the subject of Challenger, a
recently-discovered pterodactyl was named for Doyle. Edwards
pointed out how Doyle manages to make the pterodactyl a
sympathetic and even tragic character in the book.

From the audience I asked if Doyle didn't seem to salt his
clues into the story. For example, while it is true that a
particular type of mud on a shoe might be a telling clue that
most people would overlook, it would be unlikely to show up on
a shoe in recognizable quatities anyway and its presence is
contrived. Curiously Edwards, the Holmes expert, was the more
inclined to agree with me. Hall said that "every contact
leaves a mark" and it would in fact be detectable one way or
another to show exactly where a suspect had been. Edwards said that
this was based on a real police case, but the person had been
in another part of the country. It is unlikely that Holmes
would know dirt from all over London or that a particular kind
of dirt would be unique to a particular part of London. [-mrl]

"This short item will explore culture clash, and will feature
people who have travelled to other countries for fan meetings,
who have lived in other countries and who have perceived the
differences in life there."

The problem with a half-hour panel is that there is less than
half the effective time for the panel, since the introductions,
etc., still take the same amount of time as a one-hour panel.

The panelists, all of whom were living in a country other than
the one they had grown up in, had a variety of anecdotes, but
no real generalizations. Then again, how could they?--the
whole idea is that one can't generalize.

For example, one panelist who had moved to Holland had her
husband arrange a birthday party for her. It was only
afterwards that she found out she had been considered very rude
because she wasn't bustling about serving everyone--in
Holland that is the responsibility of the person whose birthday
it is. (In the United States, that person is the honored
guest.)

Body language and other clues also differ. Gruter-Andrew said
it took him a while to learn that the slower an American
speaks, the angrier (not the more polite) he or she is. And when
he speaks slowly to an American, it is interpreted as patronizing.

Social structures, even in fandom, differ. In Germany, the
first thing a group of fans will do is to register as an
official organization with the government. And in Holland,
people travel long distances for meetings, but a lot of time is
spent in the meeting part, rather than the socializing aspect.
Gruter-Andrew said this was similar in Germany; in fact,
Germans coming to conventions in other countries at first didn't realize
there was something (parties) after the program was over.

The panelists noted that what was considered liberal varies
from place to place. One had been told Madison, Wisconsin, was
a very liberal town, but discovered that her punk clothing and
hairstyle were a bit too liberal, and she needed to get
the T-shirt, the jeans, and the Birkenstocks.

After this we went back to the hotel where we were supposed to
meet with other AT&T-ers from Britain, but the only people who
showed up were Dale, Jo, Pete, Kate, Mark, and me. So we went
out to dinner at the nearby Thai Royale as a smaller group than
we had planned.

After dinner we walked over to the Forte Crest for the Dead Dog
Party, announced for 9 PM. In one last screw-up, that turned
out to be open to gophers only, though the door guards said
that they could probably allow people with ribbons (program
participants, etc.) in. This was too exclusive to be
interesting, so we left.

At each of the last five conventions I've gone to, someone has mistaken
me for Connie Willis.
This time it didn't. (Maybe now that they know I'm not Willis,
they'll realize I'm not getting any Hugo awards. (:-) )

The WSFS Business Meeting defeated an amendment (passed on from ConAdian)
to restrict Worldcons from being held within 60 miles of the NASFiC held
in the voting year. They passed other pass-on amendments to require
the release of statistical information about Hugo voting, to reduce the
"overlap" of the Hugo fiction categories to 5,000 words or 20% of the new
category limits, and to clarify the counting of ineligible candidates for
site selection.

The WSFS Business Meeting passed original amendments removing the Hugo
Award for Best Original Artwork, adding "related subjects" to the
description of what is eligible for the Best Dramatic Presentation, and
making various technical changes; if these pass at L.A.Con III, they will
take effect.

I used to rank all the Worldcons I had been to, but it was getting
harder and harder to fit the new ones in, perhaps because the cons
of twenty years ago are hard to remember in detail, so instead I
will split them into three groups: the good, the average, and the
below-average. Within each group they are listed chronologically.

This con report runs about 27,000 words (not counting Mark's write-up), the
same as last year's.

At Intersection, I went to thirteen panels, six lectures, and one film;
at ConAdian, I went to twenty-two panels, a one-man show, and a film;
at ConFrancisco I went to twenty-four panels and two lectures; at
MagiCon I went to sixteen panels: at Chicon V I went to twelve panels
(I was a real slacker in those days!). In this regard, Intersection was
clearly underprogrammed for me. (:-)

The 1998 bid was won by Baltimore in what turned out to be a not very
close race--after the NASFiC, no one wanted Atlanta, and Niagara
Falls and Boston were considered to have insufficient facilities. The
Baltimore convention will be called Bucconneer and will be held August
5-9, 1998. (You will note this is not the traditional Labor Day
weekend. The committee lost the convention center for the holiday
weekend and decided to bid a different set of dates. The convention
will start on Wednesday and end on Sunday.) Current rates are US$30
for a supporting membership, US$80 for an attending membership. Guests
of Honor are C. J. Cherryh, Milton A. Rothman, Stanley Schmidt, and
Michael Whelan; Charles Sheffield is Toastmaster. Bucconneer can be
reached at P. O. Box 314, Annapolis Junction MD 20701,
baltimore98@access.digex.net,
or
http://www.access.digex.net/~balt98.